"Yes--I--you know, aunt, I had begun to wonder if you were not
fabulous, too," she tried, desperately anxious to seem at ease. She was
afraid to look at that, to her, grotesque figure, afraid to show by
some unconscious reflex her dislike for its ugliness. As she took the
bony, ring-bedecked hand that was held out to her, she kept her eyes
away from her aunt's face.

Miss Deane, however, would not permit that evasion.

"Hold your head up, my dear, I want to look at you," she said, and when
Rachel reluctantly obeyed, continued, "Yes, you're more like my father
than your own, which means that you're like me, for I took after him,
too, so every one said."

Rachel drew in her breath with a little gasp. Was it possible that her
aunt could imagine for one instant that there was any likeness between
them?

"Our--our names are the same," she said nervously.

Miss Deane nodded. "There's more in it than that," she said with a
touch of complacence; "and there's no reason why there shouldn't be.
It's good Mendelism that you should take after an aunt rather than
either of your parents."

"And you really think that we are alike?" Rachel asked feebly, looking
in vain for any sign of a quizzical humour in her aunt's face.

Miss Deane looked down under her half-lowered eyelids with a proud air
of tolerance. "Ah, well, a little without doubt," she said, as though