“How did you discover the fact? Did he tell you?”
“I first discovered it by the packet of old letters and papers put away in that trunk which was the sole legacy of my dear mother to me.”
“Ah! Ah! Ancillon himself, when he came to me once at Cloud Cliffs, referred me to those documents; but when I had the trunk broken open and searched, the papers were gone!”
“I had brought them away for safe keeping. They were too important to be left.”
“I understand now! I understand. But, Lilith! We all thought your parentage was so well known that there could be no mistake about it! Your father and mother lived at Seawood. Your father was drowned in saving my life. Your mother died of the shock the very day of your birth. How, then, is it possible that this man can claim to be your father?”
“Oh, Tudor, it is a long and sad story. There is no time to tell it to you now; but this much I can tell: Joseph Wyvil and Elizabeth, who lived such a secluded life at Seawood that their neighbors knew little or nothing of them except that they belonged to the village church, and led quiet, industrious and blameless lives—were not husband and wife as people took them to be—but a devoted brother and a most unfortunate young sister, who had lost her husband by a fate much worse than death. More than this I cannot tell you now. Both died too suddenly to confide the secret to any one. So I was registered as the child of Joseph and Elizabeth Wyvil, when in fact I was the child of Alphonzo and Elizabeth Zuniga!”
“Zuniga!”
“Yes.”
“Then Ancillon is a relative of that young Spaniard we met in Washington who looked so much like him?”
“He was the same. Ancillon and Zuniga were one. Ancillon was his professional name, Zuniga was his family name.”