"Still"–and I called up a laugh–"you'd have known whether it really was Mr. Farnham, or a stranger passing himself off in his place?"
The bartender stared at me for an instant, and, had he spoken his inmost thoughts, probably they might have been appropriately expressed in the slang phrase, "Ah, what are you givin' me?" "Well, it might have been his grandfather's ghost, I daresay," he facetiously remarked at length, "but, anyhow, there seemed to be a strong resemblance between Harvey Farnham and him."
I set down my glass untouched. A cold conviction was growing within me that I had been mistaken; that, villain as Carson Wildred was, he had not, after all, been guilty of the one great crime which I had attributed to him. It seemed almost impossible that this keen-eyed man, accustomed to Farnham's comings and goings for several years, could have mistaken another for him.
Next morning when I had put together the few things that I had had occasion to unpack, and was "tipping" the pretty chambermaid who "chanced" to come to my door as I was departing, a sudden inspiration seized me, and I called the young woman back again as she was disappearing.
"By the way," I said, "did you happen to attend a Mr. Harvey Farnham, who was here a few days ago, and who has often stopped in the hotel?"
"Oh, yes, sir," she answered, "I know him quite well, and a very pleasant, generous gentleman he is–or rather" (and her face changed at some recollection), "or rather was."
I caught her up eagerly. "Was?" I echoed. "Wasn't he the same as usual this last time?"
"No, that he wasn't, sir. I thought to myself, thinks I, 'Mr. Farnham must have been disappointed in love or something,' he was so grumpy and dull. Always before when he came he had a good word for me, 'How do you do, Ginnie?' or a smile and a nod, but now he went by me without a sign, for all the world as if he'd never seen me before, though I've been here since I was seventeen; that's six years ago. When I spoke to him first, why he looked up and answered in a mumbling way, never even saying my name. But then, poor gentleman, I suppose he was too sick to think of anybody except himself."
"Did he look strangely?" I went on to question.
"Oh, I don't know about that, sir, except for the green shade he had to wear over his eyes; I suppose his face was much the same. Only I didn't get many chances to see it, and all his jolly ways and smiles were gone, so that made a difference. I was so glad when I saw his baggage coming up, for there's never been a gentleman so popular with us girls as Mr. Farnham; but except for his giving me something when he went away, he might almost as well not have been in the hotel."