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Jones’ voice and the voice of the stranger might have been the same as far as pitch and timbre were concerned, the only difference was in the accent, and that was slight.

“Well, I’m d-d-d—,” said Jones.

He turned to the other and then back to the mirror.

“Extraordinary, isn’t it?” said the other. “I don’t know whether I ought to apologise to you or you to me. My name is Rochester.”

Jones turned from the mirror, the two champagne cocktails, the whisky and the sherry were accommodating his unaccustomed brain to support this most unaccustomed situation. The thing seemed to him radiantly humorous, yet if he had known it there was very little humour in the matter.

“We must celebrate this,” said Jones, calling an attendant and giving him explicit orders as to the means.

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A small bottle of Böllinger was the means, and the celebration was mostly done by Jones, for it came about that this stranger, Rochester, whilst drinking little himself, managed by some method to keep up in gaiety and in consequence of mind with the other, though every now and then he would fall away from the point, as a ship without a steersman falls away from the wind, and lapse for a moment into what an acute observer might have deemed to be the fundamental dejection of his real nature.