Thus, on seeing a possible glimpse of Giuseppe Doria's
beautiful countenance reflected upon my eyes from the photograph of
the mother of Michael Pendean, I began to marshal all my knowledge
to confound any deduction from that accident. But judge of my
interest and surprise when I found nothing that could be pointed to
as absolute refutation of the theory now taking such swift shape in
my mind. Not one sure fact clashed with the possibility.
"Nothing at present was positively known by me which made it out of
the question that Joseph Pendean's wife should be the mother of
Giuseppe Doria. But none the less many facts might exist as yet
beyond my knowledge, which would prove such a suspicion vain. I
considered how to obtain these facts and naturally my thought turned
to Giuseppe himself. To show you by what faltering steps we
sometimes climb to safe ground, I may say that at this stage of my
inquiry I had not imagined Doria and Michael Pendean were one and
the same person. That was to come. For the moment I conceived of the
possibility that Madame Pendean, a lady who had caused some
fluttering in the Wesleyan dovecots of Penzance, might by chance
have been the mother of a second son in her native country.
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