"Certainly not," I answered. "I did not choose to turn beggar."
"How much," he asked, "do you know of your family history?"
"I know," I told him, "that my father was cashiered from the army for misconduct, and committed suicide. I know, too, that my mother's people treated her shamefully, and that she died alone in Paris and almost in poverty. It was scarcely likely, therefore, that I was going to apply to them for help." Ray nodded.
"I thought so," he remarked grimly. "I shall have to talk to you for a few minutes about your father."
I said nothing. My surprise, indeed, had bereft me of words. He sipped his wine slowly, and continued.
"Fate has dealt a little hardly with you," he said. "I am almost a stranger to you, and there are even reasons why you and I could never be friends. Yet it apparently falls to my lot to supplement the little you know of a very unpleasant portion of your family history. That rascal of a lawyer who absconded with your money should have told you on your twenty-first birthday."
"A pleasant heritage!" I remarked bitterly; "yet I always wanted to know the whole truth."
"Here goes, then," he said, filling my glass with wine. "Your father was second in command at Gibraltar. He sold a plan of the gallery forts to the French Government, and was dismissed from the army."
I started as though I had been stung. Ray continued, his stern matter-of-fact tone unshaken.
"He did not commit suicide as you were told. He lived, in Paris, a life of continual and painful degeneration. Your mother died of a broken heart. There was another woman, of course, whose influence over your father was unbounded, and at whose instigation he committed this disgraceful act. This woman is now at Braster."