We're both cheques equally, and neither is a counterfoil. Cyril
and I depend for our characters, as everybody else does, upon our
father and mother and our remoter progenitors. Only being twins,
and twins cast in very much the same sort of mould, we're naturally
the product of the same two parents, at the same precise point in
their joint life history; and therefore we're practically all but
identical."

As he rose from his desk, with the telegram in his hand, the porter
appeared at the door with letters. Guy seized them at once, with
some little impatience. The first was from Cyril. He tore it open
in haste, and skimmed it through rapidly. Montague Nevitt meanwhile
sat languid in his chair, striking a pensive note now and again
on his violin, with his eyes half closed and his lips parted. Guy
drew a sigh of relief as he skimmed his note.

"Just what I expected," he said slowly. "Cyril couldn't have
been there. He writes last night--the letter's marked 'Delayed in
transmission'; no doubt by the accident--'I shall come up to town
on Friday or Saturday morning to see the dentist. One of my teeth
is troublesome; I suppose you've had the same; the second on the
left from the one we've lost; been aching a fortnight. I want it
stopped. But to-morrow I really CAN'T leave work. I've got well
into the swing of such a lovely bit of fern, with Sardanapalus
just gleaming like gold in the foreground.' So that settles matters
somewhat. He can't have been there. Though, I think, even so, I'll
just telegraph for safety's sake and make things certain."

Nevitt struck a chord twice with a sweep of his hand, listened to
it dreamily for a minute with far-away eyes, and then remarked once