“Never!”
“But you used once to see her—as Dame Dermody predicted—in dreams?”
“Yes—when I was a lad.”
“And, in the after-time, it was not Mary, but Mrs. Van Brandt who came to you in dreams—who appeared to you in the spirit, when she was far away from you in the body? Poor old Dame Dermody. She little thought, in her life-time, that her prediction would be fullfilled by the wrong woman!”
To that result her inquiries had inscrutably conducted her! If she had only pressed them a little further—if she had not unconsciously led me astray again by the very next question that fell from her lips—she must have communicated to my mind the idea obscurely germinating in hers—the idea of a possible identity between the Mary of my first love and Mrs. Van Brandt!
“Tell me,” she went on. “If you met with your little Mary now, what would she be like? What sort of woman would you expect to see?”
I could hardly help laughing. “How can I tell,” I rejoined, “at this distance of time?”
“Try!” she said.
Reasoning my way from the known personality to the unknown, I searched my memory for the image of the frail and delicate child of my remembrance: and I drew the picture of a frail and delicate woman—the most absolute contrast imaginable to Mrs. Van Brandt!
The half-realized idea of identity in the mind of Miss Dunross dropped out of it instantly, expelled by the substantial conclusion which the contrast implied. Alike ignorant of the aftergrowth of health, strength, and beauty which time and circumstances had developed in the Mary of my youthful days, we had alike completely and unconsciously misled one another. Once more, I had missed the discovery of the truth, and missed it by a hair-breadth!