"Surely I am," was the quiet reply, "why should you think me to be otherwise. Because I marry Miss Pewsey?"
"No. You can marry whom you choose. I have nothing to do with that. Dr. Forge, But when you were my guardian, why did you not tell me that the property was so encumbered?"
"I wanted your boyhood to be unclouded. And also," he added, seeing Rupert make a gesture of contempt, "I thought you might get money from China."
Rupert started. "What do you mean by that?"
"Well," said Forge deliberately and looking on the ground, "you know that your father and I invested in a gold mine on the Hwei River? Well we worked it for a long time until your father died of dysentery--"
"Are you sure he died of dysentery?" asked Ainsleigh sharply.
"So far as I know he did," was Forge's patient reply, "as I told you before, I was in Pekin when he died. But if you are in doubt you should go to China and ask Lo-Keong."
"What has he to do with it?"
"This much," said Forge quietly, "and I am telling you, what I have kept hitherto from every living creature. Your father and I made money out of the mine--a great sum. I made the most--about ten thousand pounds, but your father made at least eight thousand."
"And where is that money?" asked Rupert anxiously.