The Major was evidently puzzled by what I had told him.  He mused for several moments without speaking.  Hitherto my face had been in half-shadow, the candle having been placed behind the curtain that fell round the head of the bed, so as not to dazzle my eyes.  This candle the Major now took, and held it about a yard above my head, so that its full light fell on my upturned face.  I was swathed in a blanket, and while addressing the Major had raised myself on my elbow in bed.  My long black hair, still damp, fell wildly round my shoulders.

The moment Major Strickland’s eyes rested on my face, on which the full light of the candle was now shining, his ruddy cheek paled; he started back in amazement, and was obliged to replace the candlestick on the table.

“Great Heavens! what a marvellous resemblance!” he exclaimed.  “It cannot arise from accident merely.  There must be a hidden link somewhere.”

Then taking the candle for the second time, he scanned my face again with eyes that seemed to pierce me through and through.  “It is as if one had come to me suddenly from the dead,” I heard him say in a low voice.  Then with down-bent head and folded arms he took several turns across the room.

“Sir, of whom do I remind you?” I timidly asked.

“Of someone, child, whom I knew when I was young—­of someone who died long years before you were born.”  There was a ring of pathos in his voice that seemed like the echo of some sorrowful story.

“Are you sure that you have no other name than Janet Hope?” he asked, presently.

“None, sir, that I know of.  I have been called Janet Hope ever since I can remember.”

“But about your parents?  What were they called, and where did they live?”

“I know nothing whatever about them except what Sister Agnes told me yesterday.”

“And she said—­what?”

“That my father was drowned abroad several years ago, and that my mother died a year later.”

“Poverina!  But it is strange that Sister Agnes should have known your parents.  Perhaps she can supply the missing link.  The mention of her name reminds me that I have not yet sent word to Deepley Walls that you are safe and sound at Rose Cottage.  Geordie must start without a moment’s delay.  I am an old friend of Lady Chillington, my dear, so that she will be quite satisfied when she learns that you are under my roof.”

“But, sir, when shall I see the gentleman who got me out of the water?” I asked.

“What, Geordie?  Oh, you’ll see Geordie in the morning, never fear!  A good boy! a fine boy! though it’s his old uncle who says it.”

Then he rang the bell, and when Deborah, his only servant, came up, he committed me with many injunctions into her charge.  Then taking my head gently between his hands, he kissed me tenderly on the forehead, and wished me “Good-night, and happy dreams.”

Deborah was very kind.  She brought me up a delicious little supper, and decided that there was no need for me to take the doctor’s nauseous mixture.  She took it herself instead, but merely as a sop to her conscience and my own; “for, after all, you know, there’s very little difference in physic—­it’s all nasty; and I daresay this mixture will do my lumbago no harm.”