"I mean," replied Marion, calmly, "that it is a case of the dead alive. You have not heard, then? If you went out into Scarborough, I fancy you would hear very quickly. Mr. Singleton's son, who was supposed to be dead, has proved to be very much alive, and I am expecting a visit from him to-day."
"My dear Miss Lynde!"—the good woman fairly gasped—"what a piece of news! And how quietly you take it! Mr. Singleton's son alive! Good Heavens! In that case, who will have the property?"
"That is what we are going to settle," said Marion. "It strikes me that a son should inherit his father's estate; do you not think so?"
"I don't know," answered Mrs. Winter, more than ever confounded by this cool inquiry. "Usually—oh! yes, I suppose so," she added after a minute. "But in this case—the young man was so wild that his father cast him off, did he not?"
"I never heard the story clearly from any one who had authority to tell it," answered Marion. "I do not know what occurred between father and son, but I am quite sure that Mr. Singleton believed his son to be dead when he made the will in which he left me his fortune."
"Then, my dear, if I may ask, what do you mean to do?"
"What is right and honest," said Marion, with a faint smile. "Wish me courage, for there is the door-bell!"
CHAPTER XXVI.
The first thing of which Marion was conscious when she entered the drawing-room was that a pair of bold, bright and keen dark eyes were instantly fastened on her. The owner of these eyes was a tall and very striking-looking man, whose originally brunette skin was so deeply bronzed by exposure to a tropical sun that he scarcely had the appearance of a white man at all; but whose clear-cut features at once recalled those of old Mr. Singleton, whose whole aspect was so unusual and so remarkably handsome that it would have been impossible for him either to personate or be mistaken for any one else. Marion recognized this even while Mr. Tom Singleton was in the act of stepping forward to take her hand, and said to herself that no one who had ever seen this man once could doubt whether or not he was the person he assumed to be.