The second photograph had been taken at Monte Carlo, and it was difficult to believe that it was of the same woman, so tragic a change had taken place within those ten years. Hanaud held the portraits side by side. The grace, the suggestion of humour had all gone; the figure had grown broad, the features coarse and heavy; the cheeks had fattened, the lips were pendulous; and there was nothing but violence in the eyes. It was a dreadful picture of collapse.
"It is best to be precise, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud gently, "though these photographs tell their unhappy story clearly enough. Madame Harlowe, during the last years of her life, drank?"
"Since my uncle's death," Betty explained. "Her life, as very likely you know already, had been rather miserable and lonely before she married him. But she had a dream then on which to live. After Simon Harlowe died, however——" and she ended her explanation with a gesture.
"Yes," Hanaud replied, "of course, Mademoiselle, we have known, Monsieur Frobisher and I, ever since we came into this affair that there was some secret. We knew it before your reticence of yesterday or Mademoiselle Upcott's of to-day. Waberski must have known of something which you would not care to have exposed before he threatened your lawyers in London, or brought his charges against you."
"Yes, he knew and the doctors and the servants of course who were very loyal. We did our best to keep our secret but we could never be sure that we had succeeded."
A friendly smile broadened Hanaud's face.
"Well, we can make sure now and here," he said, and both the girls and Jim stared at him.
"How?" they exclaimed in an incredulous voice.
Hanaud beamed. He held them in suspense. He spread out his hands. The artist as he would have said, the mountebank as Jim Frobisher would have expressed it, had got the upper hand in him, and prepared his effect.
"By answering me one simple question," he said. "Have either of you two ladies received an anonymous letter upon the subject?"