"No, Garrett. I can faithfully and truthfully say that I am not a drunkard."
Then she was a child. It was a child that he----!
"Let me tell you about it," she was saying. "About eleven months ago something that might be regarded in the light of a family legacy came to me. The necklace my mother gave me turned out to be of extremely valuable pearls. I sold it for seventy-five thousand pounds--it has since realised one hundred and twenty thousand. That is the secret of such comfort and ease as you now see us enjoying."
The story was amazing, but Westenra instinctively knew it to be true. He had often been struck by the wonderful pearly beauty of the Comfort necklace.
"I am glad for your sake," he said at last; "it must simplify the future a great deal. I beg your pardon for what I said a moment ago. It is bad enough that I should have been denied the right to support my own son--but I could not bear that that other fellow should have done it. It even sticks in my gorge that you should have allowed Bran to come into contact with him."
"Whom are you speaking of, Garrett?"
"Why do you ask that? Surely you do not think me unaware of the fact of your return to Valdana?"
"Ah!" she said softly, and drew in her breath. "You know that?"
"Of course I know. It was that knowledge which brought me to France. I could not allow Bran or even Haidee, to be anywhere within the radius of that--" He bit off "scoundrel."
"Neither of them has ever seen him----"