I was mystified. I could hardly remember afterwards what I had answered to her strange question. I think I said in a seemingly indifferent voice,
"Is it Mr. Dalton?"
But I know she looked at me with an expression of infinite reproachful longing and asked,
"Have you a doubt of it?"
"But I never gave him a picture of mine," I argued, "and moreover, I never had pictures taken like this one. If it is he, where did he get this, and why did he put it here?"
She shot a wincing, suspicious glance at me from under her white lids and repeated huskily,
"You never gave him this picture?"
"On my word, I did not Hortense," I answered. "How could I? It never belonged to me. I never saw it in my life until this moment. We cannot be sure that it is my portrait."
"Look at those eyes and that mouth, and the hair waving over that brow," she muttered, half in soliloquy, with her gaze still bent upon the mysterious locket. "Of course it is you, Amey Hampden, and no one else."
"Well, it is a dark puzzle to me," I said, "and I wish I could explain it."