“I’d think you were just joking a little.”

“But I’m not joking, Lucy; I am in earnest.  Take a good look at me, here at this profile.  Do I look like your father?”

She looked closely.  “I believe you do,” she said, still without a guess at the truth.  “Your forehead slopes just like his, and your nose has the same bump on it.  I never noticed that before.”

“What might that mean, Lucy?”

“What might what mean?”

“That I look like your father.”

He had turned his face to her now, but she still gazed at him, as if the truth was just struggling for recognition.  The smile vanished for an instant from her face, and then returned.  She would not entertain the advance messenger.

“I don’t object to your looking like my papa, for he’s a mighty fine looking man.”

“Lucy, you saw what your father and I were doing last night?”

“Yes.”

“What did you think—­what do you now think of us?”

“Again, Chester, I don’t object to you and father spooning a bit.  In fact, I think that’s rather nice.”

Chester laughed a little now, which loosened the tension considerably; but he returned to the attack: 

“Lucy, what would you think if your father had a son who had been lost when a baby, and that now he should return to him as a grown man?”

“Well, I would think that would be jolly, as the English say.”

“And that his son’s name was Chester Lawrence?” he continued as if there had been no interruption.

Now the cog in Lucy’s mental make-up caught firmly into the machinery that had been buzzing about her for some time.

“Are you my brother?” she asked.

“Yes; I am your brother.”

“My real, live, long lost brother?”

“Yes.”

“Now I see what you have been driving at all this time.  You say you are my brother, that my father is your father.  Now explain.”

“That’s not so easy, Lucy.  I would much rather your father would do that.  But I can tell you a little, for it’s very little I know—­and, Lucy, that little is not pleasant.”

“But I must know.”  Her face was serious again.  She was bracing herself bravely too.

“I was born outside the marriage relation, and your father was my father!”

That was plain enough—­brutally plain.  The girl turned to marble.  Had he killed her?

“Go on,” she whispered.

“No more now—­some other time.”

“Go on, Chester.”

Chester told her in brief sentences the simple facts, and what had led to his discovery of the truth just the other day.  It was this that had caused the change she had noticed in him.

“Lucy, I was not sure,” he said, “so I went to your father last night and asked him pointedly, directly, and he said ‘Yes.’  That explains the situation you found us in.  My heart went out to my father, Lucy; and his heart went out to his son.”