“O Grace,” he murmured; “the same! always the same; the one woman in all the world to me! But I will not distress you. Other griefs lie nearer your heart than any I could hope to summon up, and I do not know as I would have it otherwise if I could. Proceed with your questions. They were in reference to Clarke, I believe.”
“No, I only asked if you had kept yourself acquainted with what has been going on in Hamilton since you left. Did you know that Ephraim Earle was living again in the old house, and that Polly is rapidly losing her fortune owing to his insatiable demands for money?”
“No!” He sprang to his feet and his whole attitude showed distress and anger. “I told her to make the fellow give her a proof, an unmistakable proof, that he was indeed the brilliant inventor of whose fame we have all been proud.”
“And he furnished it, Oswald. You mean the medal which he received from France, do you not? Well, he had it among his treasures in the cave, and he showed it to her one day. It was the one thing, he declared, from which he had never parted in all his adventurous career.”
“You are dreaming! he never had that! Could not have had that! It was some deception he practised upon you!” exclaimed the doctor, aghast and trembling.
But she shook her lovely head, none the less beautiful because her locks were becoming silvered on the forehead, and answered: “It was the very medal we saw in our youth, with the French arms and inscription upon it. Dr. Sutherland examined it, and Mr. Crouse says he remembers it well. Besides it had his name engraved upon it and the year.”
The doctor, to whom her words seemed to come in a sort of nightmare, sank into his chair and stared upon her with such horror that she would have recoiled from him in dismay had he been any other man than Oswald Izard, so long loved and so long and passionately borne with, notwithstanding his mysterious words and startling inconsistencies of conduct.
“You do not know why this surprises me,” he exclaimed, and hung his head. “I was so sure,” he added below his breath, “that this was some impostor, and not Ephraim Earle.”
“I know,” she proceeded, after a moment, as soon, indeed, as she thought he could understand her words, “that you did not credit his claims and refused to recognize him as Polly’s father. But I had no idea you felt so deeply on the subject or I might have written to you long ago. You have some reasons for your doubts, Oswald; for I see that your convictions are not changed by this discovery. What is it? I am ready to listen if no one else is, for he is blighting Polly’s life and at the same time shattering my son’s hopes.”
“I said—I swore to Polly that I had no reason,” he declared, gloomily dropping his eyes and assuming at once the defensive.