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Updated: May 22, 2025
When the young lady and I were left alone for a few minutes I looked her squarely in the face and said with sudden gravity: "You, too, Miss Margovan, have a double: I saw her last Tuesday afternoon in Union square." She trained her great gray eyes upon me for a moment, but her glance was a trifle less steady than my own and she withdrew it, fixing it on the tip of her shoe.
You know, good friend, what had occurred there. In one chamber lay Julia Margovan, hours dead by poison; in another John Stevens, bleeding from a pistol wound in the chest, inflicted by his own hand. As I burst into the room, pushed aside the physicians and laid my hand upon his forehead he unclosed his eyes, stared blankly, closed them slowly and died without a sign.
A few minutes later I have no recollection of the intermediate time I found myself hurrying along an unfamiliar street as fast as I could walk. I did not know where I was, nor whither I was going, but presently sprang up the steps of a house before which were two or three carriages and in which were moving lights and a subdued confusion of voices. It was the house of Mr. Margovan.
"Margovan is the only man in the office here whom I know well and like. When he came in this morning and we had passed the usual greetings some singular impulse prompted me to say: 'Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Margovan, but I neglected to ask your address. I got the address, but what under the sun I was to do with it, I did not know until now.
"Was she very like me?" she asked, with an indifference which I thought a little overdone. "So like," said I, "that I greatly admired her, and being unwilling to lose sight of her I confess that I followed her until Miss Margovan, are you sure that you understand?" She was now pale, but entirely calm. She again raised her eyes to mine, with a look that did not falter.
"Miss Margovan," I said, doubtless with something of the compassion in my voice that I had in my heart, "it is impossible not to think you the victim of some horrible compulsion. Rather than impose new embarrassments upon you I would prefer to aid you to regain your freedom." She shook her head, sadly and hopelessly, and I continued, with agitation: "Your beauty unnerves me.
His hands were clasped behind him, his head was bowed; he seemed to observe nothing. As he approached the shadow in which I sat I recognized him as the man whom I had seen meet Julia Margovan years before at that spot. But he was terribly altered gray, worn and haggard. Dissipation and vice were in evidence in every look; illness was no less apparent.
This was said with so bright a smile and so engaging a manner that I had not the heart to refuse, and although I had never seen the man in my life I promptly replied: "You are very good, sir, and it will give me great pleasure to accept the invitation. Please present my compliments to Mrs. Margovan and ask her to expect me." With a shake of the hand and a pleasant parting word the man passed on.
These were not my exact words, but that was the sense of them, as nearly as my sudden and conflicting emotions permitted me to express it. I rose and left her without another look at her, met the others as they reentered the room and said, as calmly as I could: "I have been bidding Miss Margovan good evening; it is later than I thought." John decided to go with me.
That he had mistaken me for my brother was plain enough. That was an error to which I was accustomed and which it was not my habit to rectify unless the matter seemed important. But how had I known that this man's name was Margovan? It certainly is not a name that one would apply to a man at random, with a probability that it would be right.
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