"Hurry in, girls! There's another letter from the major waiting for you!"
[CHAPTER XIX]
THE UNEXPECTED
The major's letter did nothing, however, to lighten the gloom. On the contrary, it only increased it tenfold. The main substance of it was in this paragraph:
It's singular how much you can dig out about a subject, once you put your mind to it. I thought at first that I had told you all that was known about Jack Carringford and his affairs—all that could be discovered. But the deeper I go into it, the more I seem to unearth. Yesterday another friend to whom I had written, on the off-chance of getting a little information (but from whom I really didn't expect much) sent me this bit of news. It seems he heard it said that after Carringford went back to England he married again, and it is thought that he did not live very long after,—died suddenly of pneumonia, or something like it, in an obscure town in the north of England. Perhaps this will help you some in your amateur detective work. If I glean any more information, I'll let you know at once. I rather enjoy this delving into the past.
"Oh, horrors!" exclaimed Marcia. "Could anything be plainer than this is getting to be? Of course, that explains it all! Cecily didn't remember her father, and her 'mother' was really her stepmother. I wonder if she knows it. She never mentioned it, but then she seldom speaks of her mother, anyway. Though I always thought, from the way she acted, that she was very fond of her."
"It certainly grows more convincing with every added piece of news we hear," mused the captain. "I wish we could find some loophole for thinking that this tangle doesn't concern Cecily. But how on earth she can have any Chinese ancestry, beats me. She doesn't show a trace of it. One would certainly think she'd have almond eyes and coarse, straight hair, or a dark complexion, or something! It's the one thing that gives me the slightest hope that she can't be Carringford's daughter."