"Yes. I was praying beside my wife's bed. I heard cries for help, and when I came out I found Jean dead, stabbed to the heart by Beauchamp. The scoundrel had fled--he had taken my child with him."
"Why should he have encumbered himself with the child?"
"To wring my heart!" replied Lestrange savagely. "He knew that I loved my little Marie. He carried her away. I would have followed, but all my troubles and the shock of Zelia's death brought on an attack of fever. I rose from my bed weeks later to hear that Beauchamp had vanished. On the night he committed the double crimes of murder and kidnapping he went on board his yacht at Falmouth, and was never heard of again. I searched for him everywhere, but without success."
"What about his estate?" asked Alan.
"There he has been cunning. It seemed that he had long since planned to elope with Zelia, and that some weeks before he had sold his land. He took the money with him, and the child. Had Zelia been alive she would have gone too. As months and years went by, I gave up hope, and I believed that the yacht had foundered."
Suddenly Sophy got up, much agitated.
"I can listen to this no longer," she said. "You are telling lies."
"Her mother's temper," muttered Lestrange. "Zelia's masterly way of crushing argument."
"Don't call her my mother!" cried Sophy. "I won't have it. I am not the child that was taken away by Beauchamp. I never knew any one of that name."
"Probably not," replied Lestrange smoothly. "There were reasons for its being kept from you. But Mr. Thorold----"