He wanted to be deceived, he meant to
be deceived, and he deceived himself very thoroughly. Not only were
the face and figure, the face and figure of Alice Chisane, but the
voice and lower tones were exactly the same, and so were the turns
of speech; and the little mannerisms, that every woman has, of gait
and gesticulation, were absolutely and identically the same. The
turn of the head was the same; the tired look in the eyes at the end
of a long walk was the same; the sloop and wrench over the saddle to
hold in a pulling horse was the same; and once, most marvellous of
all, Mrs. Landys-Haggert singing to herself in the next room, while
Hannasyde was waiting to take her for a ride, hummed, note for note,
with a throaty quiver of the voice in the second line:--"Poor
Wandering One!" exactly as Alice Chisane had hummed it for Hannasyde
in the dusk of an English drawing-room. In the actual woman
herself--in the soul of her--there was not the least likeness; she
and Alice Chisane being cast in different moulds. But all that
Hannasyde wanted to know and see and think about, was this maddening
and perplexing likeness of face and voice and manner.
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