The longer I looked at it, the more was I convinced I must have
judged aright. Not indeed that in any true sense I could say I
remembered her face or figure: I was so young when she died,
according to everybody's account, that even if I'd remained in my
First State I could hardly have retained any vivid recollection of
her. But both lady and house brought up in me once more to some
vague degree that strange consciousness of familiarity I had noticed
at The Grange: and what was odder still, the sense of wont seemed
even more marked in the Australian cottage than in the case of the
house which all probability would have inclined one beforehand to
think I must have remembered better. If this was indeed my earliest
home, then I seemed to recollect it far more readily than my later
one.

I turned trembling to Jane, hardly daring to frame the question that
rose first to my lips.

"Is that--my mother?" I faltered out slowly.

But there Jane couldn't help me. She'd never seen the lady, she
said.

"When first I come to The Grange, miss, you see, your mother'd been
buried a year; there was only you and Mr. Callingham in family. And
I never saw that photograph, neither, till I picked it out of the
box locked up in the attic. The little girl might be you, like
enough, when you look at it sideways; and yet again it mightn't. But
the lady I don't know. I never saw your mother."