That Affair Next Door · Book II · Chapter 24 (2/2)

I was so overwhelmed, that for once I found difficulty in speaking. I glanced from her to the white form in the shrouded bed, and back again in ever-growing astonishment and dismay.

“You have seen her!” I at last reiterated in what I meant to be a whisper, but which fell little short of being a cry, “and you took in this girl?”

Her surprise at this burst was almost equal to mine.

“Yes, why not; what have they in common?”

I sank back, my house of cards was trembling to its foundations.

“Do they⁠—do they not look alike?” I gasped. “I thought⁠—I imagined⁠—”

“Louise Van Burnam look like that girl! O no, they were very different sort of women. What made you think there was any resemblance between them?”

I did not answer her; the structure I had reared with such care and circumspection had fallen about my ears and I lay gasping under the ruins.