“Look here, Brook,” answered the old man, taking his feet from the chair on which they rested, and sitting up straight in the low easy chair. “People have said a lot of things about me in my life, and I’ll do the world the credit to add that it might have said twice as much with a good show of truth. But nobody ever said that I was mean, nor that I ever disappointed anybody in money matters who had a right to expect something of me. And that’s pretty conclusive evidence, because I’m a Scotch-man, and we are generally supposed to be a close-fisted tribe. They’ve said everything about me that the world can say, except that I’ve told you about my first marriage. She—she got her divorce, you know. She had a perfect right to it.”
The old man lit another cigarette, and sipped his brandy and soda thoughtfully.
“I don’t like to talk about money,” he said in a lower tone. “But I don’t want you to think me mean, Brook. I allowed her a thousand a year after she had got rid of me. She never touched it. She isn’t that kind. She would rather starve ten times over. But the money has been paid to her account in London for twenty-seven years. Perhaps she doesn’t know it. All the better for her daughter, who will find it after her mother’s death, and get it all. I only don’t want you to think I’m mean, Brook.”
“Then she married again—your first wife?” asked the young man, with natural curiosity. “And she’s alive still?”
“Yes,” answered Sir Adam, thoughtfully. “She married again six years after I did—rather late—and she had one daughter.”
“What an odd idea!” exclaimed Brook. “To think that those two people are somewhere about the world. A sort of stray half-sister of mine, the girl would be—I mean—what would be the relationship, Governor, since we are talking about it?”
“None whatever,” answered the old man, in a tone so extraordinarily sharp that Brook looked up in surprise. “Of course not! What relation could she be? Another mother and another father—no relation at all.”
“Do you mean to say that I could marry her?” asked Brook idly.
Sir Adam started a little.
“Why—yes—of course you could, as she wouldn’t be related to you.”