“I was born in Pondicherry,” replied the young girl, quietly, “and I am the only legitimate child of the late Captain and Mrs. Duplessis, own sister to her ladyship.”
A wave of sensation, quickly suppressed by the coroner, went through the crowd at these words. The emphasis which the witness had put on the word “legitimate” could not be mistaken, and everyone felt that here must lie the clue to the, so far impenetrable, mystery of the Indian woman’s death.
All eyes were now turned on old Lady d’Alboukirk and on her niece Henriette, but the two ladies were carrying on a whispered conversation together, and had apparently ceased to take any further interest in the proceedings.
“The deceased was your confidential maid, was she not?” asked the coroner, after a slight pause.
“Yes.”
“She came over to England with you recently?”
“Yes; she had to accompany me in order to help me to make good my claim to being my late mother’s only legitimate child, and therefore the heir to the barony of d’Alboukirk.”
Her voice had trembled a little as she said this, but now, as breathless silence reigned in the room, she seemed to make a visible effort to control herself, and, replying to the coroner’s question, she gave a clear and satisfactory account of her terrible discovery of her faithful servant’s death. Her evidence had lasted about a quarter of an hour or so, when suddenly the coroner put the momentous question to her:
“Do you know anything about the papers which the deceased woman carried about her person, and reference to which has already been made?”
“Yes,” she replied quietly; “they were the proofs relating to my claim. My father, Captain Duplessis, had in early youth, and before he met my mother, contracted a secret union with a half-caste woman, who was Roonah’s own sister. Being tired of her, he chose to repudiate her—she had no children—but the legality of the marriage was never for a moment in question. After that, he married my mother, and his first wife subsequently died, chiefly of a broken heart; but her death only occurred two months after the birth of my sister Henriette. My father, I think, had been led to believe that his first wife had died some two years previously, and he was no doubt very much shocked when he realised what a grievous wrong he had done our mother. In order to mend matters somewhat, he and she went through a new form of marriage—a legal one this time—and my father paid a lot of money to Roonah’s relatives to have the matter hushed up. Less than a year after this second—and only legal—marriage, I was born and my mother died.”