"Oh, quite right, was it? Stop a bit. You were born in 1855. You told me so yourself; you may remember the time, and you stake your life I don't forget it. It was the sweetest music I ever heard, was that there date! Shall I tell you why? Why, because them two—the Red Marquis and his mother's maid—were married on October 22d, 1853."
"Well?"
Hunt took out a handful of cigars which had been provided for all comers in the evening; he had filled his pockets with them; and now he selected one by the light of the setting moon and lit it deliberately. Then he puffed a mouthful of smoke in Jack's direction, and grinned.
"'Well,' says you; and you may well 'well!' For the Red Marquis deserted his wife and went out to Australia before he'd been married a month. And out there he married again. But you were five years old, my fine fellow, before his first wife died, and was buried in this here parish! You can look at her tombstone for yourself. She died and was buried as Eliza Hunt; and just that much was worth two hundred a year to us for good and all; because, you see, I'm sorry to say she never had a child."
Both in substance and in tone this last statement was the most convincing of all. Here was an insolent exultation tempered by a still more insolent regret; and the very incompleteness of the triumph engraved it the deeper with the stamp of harsh reality.
Jack saw his position steadily in all its bearings. He was nobody. A little time ago he had stepped into Claude's shoes, but now Claude would step into his. Well, thank God that it was Claude! And yet—and yet—that saving fact made facts of all the rest.
"I've no doubt your yarn is quite true," said Jack, still in a tone that amazed himself. "But of course you have some proofs on paper?"
"Plenty."
"Then why couldn't you come out with all this before?"
Hunt gave so broad a grin that a volume of smoke escaped haphazard from his gaping mouth.