"How long may it be since you saw your cousin--before last night, I mean ?" "Several years; above six, certainly." "Oh, it is quite possible, then," said Trevanion, musingly; "do you know, Mr.Lorrequer, this affair seems much more puzzling to me than to you, and for this plain reason--I am disposed to think you never saw your cousin last night." "Why, confound it, there is one circumstance that I think may satisfy you on that head.

You will not deny that I saw some one, who very much resembled him; and certainly, as he lent me above three thousand franks to play with at the table, it looks rather more like his act than that of a perfect stranger." "Have you got the money ?" asked Trevanion dryly.
"Yes," said I; "but certainly you are the most unbelieving of mortals, and I am quite happy that I have yet in my possession two of the billets de banque, for, I suppose, without them, you would scarcely credit me." I here opened my pocket-book, and produced the notes.
He took them, examined them attentively for an instant, held them between him and the light, refolded them, and, having placed them in my pocket-book, said--"I thought as much--they are forgeries." "Hold!" said I, "my cousin Guy, whatever wildness he may have committed, is yet totally incapable of--" "I never said the contrary, replied Trevanion, in the same dry tone as before.
"Then what can you mean, for I see no alternative between that and totally discrediting the evidence of my senses ?" "Perhaps I can suggest a middle course," said Trevanion; "lend me, therefore, a patient hearing for a few moments, and I may be able to throw some light upon this difficult matter.

You may never have heard that there is, in this same city of Paris, a person so extremely like your cousin Guy, that his most intimate friends have daily mistaken one for the other, and this mistake has the more often been made, from the circumstances of their both being in the habit of frequenting the same class in society, where, knowing and walking with the same people, the difficulty of discriminating has been greatly increased.

This individual, who has too many aliases for one to know which to particularise him by, is one of that numerous order of beings whom a high state of civilization is always engendering and throwing up on the surface of society; he is a man of low birth and mean connexions, but gifted with most taking manners and an unexceptionable address and appearance; these advantages, and the possession of apparently independent means, have opened to him the access to a certain set of people, who are well known and well received in society, and obtained for him, what he prizes much more, the admission into several clubs where high play is carried on.

In this mixed assemblage, which sporting habits and gambling, (that grand leveller of all distinctions,) have brought together, this man and your cousin Guy met frequently, and, from the constant allusion to the wonderful resemblance between them, your eccentric cousin, who, I must say, was never too select in his acquaintances, frequently amused himself by practical jokes upon their friends, which served still more to nurture the intimacy between them; and from this habit, Mr.Dudley Morewood, for such is his latest patronymic, must have enjoyed frequent opportunities of hearing much of your family and relations, a species of information he never neglected, though at the moment it might appear not so immediately applicable to his purposes.