"Who bears the cross will win the crown," said Lesbia, remembering the ornament; "or rather, as the motto goes, lose the crown by refusing the cross."
Hale nodded with a smile of contempt. "Yes! That was old Morse's idea. He gave the cross to Kate, and then she ran away with it and the man who became her husband. Jabez, knowing that the ornament is peculiar, swears that he will need the cross to prove the identity of Kate or of her child, as no one else could possess so odd a trinket. As if it could not be imitated exactly," ended Hale with contempt.
"The cross might be imitated," said Lesbia, doubtfully. "But as the poor woman is dead, it will not be so easy to produce a child as hers."
Hale, with his head on one side, looked at her oddly. "I don't know so much about that," he said slowly.
"What do you mean?" questioned Lesbia, seeing that her father had something on his mind.
"Well," said Hale, pinching his chin and still looking at her as though to hypnotise her mind; "there was no child, as I said. But you were only a baby twenty years ago, born, in fact, only a week before Kate Morse came to my house. Could we not say that you are the child?"
"What?" Lesbia looked indignantly at her father.
"Don't be foolish," said Hale testily. "It is not a crime seeing that the money is there for the asking, Bridget Burke told you that the cross was given to you by your mother. Let it be so, and I can swear and, for your sake, I can get Tim to swear, that you are the long-lost child. The train has already been laid by Bridget's story--which by the way I told her to tell you--so old Jabez will be easy to convince."
Lesbia drew a long breath. "I should not think of deceiving and robbing Mrs. Walker."
"Oh, nonsense," said Hale earnestly. "When she dies the money goes to her son, so if you marry him you can hand over twenty-five thousand to him, or say one thousand a year. Thus you will be acting honestly towards the Walkers, my dear, and----"