"No, from the look of her she'd be more likely to be wearing a diamond bangle, bless her! But all the same the bootlace helps."
"How?"
Again the implacable question was uttered by Joan. She must know all that this man had upon his side by way of argument. That was her first necessity.
"How does the bootlace help?"
"It helps because the child wearing that bootlace was received by the same old ladies who allowed you a few months afterward to adopt her--that's how. Don't you leave those old ladies out of your reckoning, Mrs. Daventry, or you will run up against a snag. I went back to the foundling a year ago and claimed my daughter."
"You did?" cried Joan. She was startled. For a moment, too, she was disconcerted. She knew nothing of any such visit. But the statement was so easily capable of proof that the reaper would hardly have made it, had it not been true. And she was quick to see how strong a presumption such a visit would create, that he was the girl's father. Then she sprang to the weak point in the statement.
"If it were true that Cynthia was your daughter, and that you claimed her a year ago, how is it that you wait until a chance meeting in a field brings you face to face?"
"There's no chance about it, believe me," James Challoner returned. For it was he. The delicate manners had been rubbed off him, the gentle voice, which had charmed so many dollars from reluctant pockets long ago at Punta del Inca, had thickened and grown husky, the well-knit figure had spread to heaviness. But this was James Challoner, after fourteen years had told their tale. "The old ladies lied to me. Yes, actually lied to me," and he spread out his hands in indignation. "Lied to a father about his daughter! They were religious people too!"
"If they did lie," Robert Daventry burst in, "they did the best thing they ever did in all their good lives."
James Challoner waved Robert Daventry and his outburst aside. He kept his eyes fixed upon Joan's face.