The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel B0082RD4EM

it."
    "Of course it isn't."
    "That's what I say, and the next moment I know it is."
    "And is THIS your trouble?"
    "Yes," answered Lynde, knitting his brows. "I felt that I shouldn't make it clear to you."
    "I am afraid you haven't, Ned. What earthly difference does it make to you whether or not it's the same girl?" "What difference!" cried Lynde impetuously; "what difference—when I love the very ground she walks on!"
    "Oh, you love her! Which one?"
    "Don't laugh at me, Flemming."
    "I am not laughing," said Flemming, looking puzzled and anxious. "It is not possible, Ned, you have allowed yourself to go and get interested in a—a person not right in her mind!"
    "Miss Denham is as sane as you are."
    "Then Miss—Denham, is it?—cannot be the girl you told me about."
    "That's the point."
    "I don't see why there should be any confusion on that point."
    "Don't you?"
    "Come, let us go to the bottom of this. You have fallen in with a woman in Switzerland, and you suspect her of being a girl you met years ago in New Hampshire under circumstances which render her appearance here nearly an impossibility. As I am not a man of vivid imagination, that floors me. What makes you think them identical?"
    "A startling personal resemblance, age, inflection of voice, manner, even a certain physical peculiarity—a scar."
    "Then what makes you doubt?"
    "Everything."
    "Well, that's comprehensive, at all events."
    "The very fact of her being here. The physician at the asylum said that that girl's malady was hopeless. Miss Denham has one of the clearest intellects I ever knew; she is a linguist, an accomplished musician, and, what is more rare, a girl who has moved a great deal in society, or, at least, has travelled a great deal, and has not ceased to be an unaffected, fresh, candid girl."
    "An American?"
    "Of course; didn't I say so?"
    "The other may have been a sister, then, or a cousin," suggested Flemming. "That would account for the likeness, which possibly you exaggerate. It was in 1872, wasn't it?"
    "I have been all over that. Miss Denham is an only child; she never had a cousin. To-day she is precisely what the other would have been, with restored health and three years added to her seventeen or eighteen."
    "Upon my word, Ned, this is one of the oddest things I ever heard. I feel, though, that you have got yourself into an unnecessary snarl. Where does Miss Denham come from? She is not travelling alone? How did you meet her? Tell me the entire story."
    "There is nothing to tell, or next to nothing. I met the Denhams here, six weeks ago. It was at the table d'hote. Two ladies came in and took places opposite me—a middle-aged lady and a young one. I did not notice them until they were seated; it was the voice of the younger lady that attracted me; I looked up,—and there was the Queen of Sheba. The same eyes, the same hair, the same face, though not so pale, and fuller; the same form, only the contours filled out. I put down my knife and fork and stared at her. She flushed, for I fancy I stared at her rather rudely, and a faint mark, like a star, came into her cheek and faded. I saw it as distinctly as I saw it the day she passed me on the country road, swinging the flower in her hand."
    "By Jove! it's a regular romance—strawberry mark and all."
    "If you don't take this seriously," said Lynde, frowning, "I am done."
    "Go on."
    "I shall never know how I got through the endless courses of that dinner; it was an empty pantomime on my part. As soon as it was over I rushed to the hotel register. The only entry among the new arrivals which pointed to the two ladies was that of Mrs. William Denham and Niece, United States. You can understand, Flemming, how I was seized with a desire to know those two women. I had come to Geneva for a day or so; but I resolved to stay here a month if they stayed, or to leave the next hour if they left. In short, I meant to follow them discreetly; it was an occupation for me. They remained. In the course of a week I knew the Denhams to speak to them when we met of a morning in the English Garden. A fortnight later it seemed to me that I had known them half my life. They had come across the previous November, they had wintered in Italy, and were going to Chamouni some time in July, where Mr. Denham was to join them; then they were to make an extended tour of Switzerland, accompanied by an old friend of the family, a professor, or a doctor, or something, who was in the south of France for his health.