I stared at Gaby Jennings as I answered; but a woman who uses liquid powder is fortified against a blush.
"That's what I want you to find out before making a bargain with his wife. All I know is, there are modern copies in the frames which once held your greatest treasures. Only a person free to come and go here for months could bring off such a fraud without too much risk. And if Doctor Jennings had brought it off, would he be a safe person to look after the health of the man he'd cheated?"
Gaby Jennings sprang to her feet. "Lady Courtenaye, my husband can sue you for slander!" she cried.
"He can; but will he?" I retorted.
"I go to tell him of what he is accused by you!" she said. "There is no fear for us, because you have no proof. But it is finished now! I leave this house where I have been insulted, and Major Murray may search the world. He will never find his lost wife!"
"Stop, Mrs. Jennings!" Murray commanded, sharply. "The house is mine, and I have not insulted you. I thank Lady Courtenaye for trying to protect me. But I don't intend to make any accusations against your husband or you. Tell me what you know, and I will write a letter asking Jennings to attend me as my doctor. That I promise."
Gaby Jennings threw me a look of triumph; and I am ashamed to say that for a minute I was so angry at the man's foolhardiness that I hardly cared what happened to him. But it was for a minute only. I felt that Jim would have done the same in his place; and I was anxious to help him in spite of himself.
The Frenchwoman accepted the promise, but suggested that Major Murray might now wish to change his mind: he might like to be alone with her when she made her revelations. Ralston was so far loyal to us, however, that he refused to let us go. We were his best friends, and he was deeply grateful, even though he had to act against our advice.
"Let them hear, then, that Rosemary Brandreth is Rosemary Brandreth to this hour—not Rosemary Murray," Gaby Jennings snapped out. "She is not your wife, because Guy Brandreth is not dead, and they are not divorced. She does not even love you, Major Murray. She loves madly her real husband, and left him only because she was jealous of some flirtation he had with another woman. Then she met you—on shipboard, was it not?—and this idea came into her head: to go through a ceremony of marriage, and get what she could to feather her nest when you were dead, and she was free to return home."
"My God! You lie!" broke out Ralston.