"I thought so. Go on."
"The nuns, who, after all, knew their California, thought they smelt a rat, for the woman was extraordinarily handsome, magnificently dressed; the Mother Superior—who is a woman of the world, all right—read the newspapers, and had never seen the name of Dubois—and knew that only stars drew fat salaries. She asked some sharp questions about the father, and the woman replied readily that he was a scientific man, an inventor, and—well, it was natural, was it not? they did not get on very well. He disliked the stage, but she had been on it before she married him, and dullness and want of money for her own needs and her child's had driven her back. He had lived in Los Angeles for a time, but had recently gone East to take a high-salaried position. It was with his consent that she asked the nuns to take the child—possibly for two or three years. When she was a famous actress and could leave the road, she would keep house for her husband in New York, and make a home for the child.
"The Mother Superior, by this time, had made up her mind that the father wished the child removed from the mother's influence, and although she took the whole yarn with a bag of salt, the child was the most beautiful she had ever seen, and obviously healthy and amiable. Moreover, the convent was to receive two hundred dollars a month—"
"What?"
"Exactly. Can you beat it? The Mother Superior made up her mind it was her duty to bring up the little thing in the way it should go. As the woman was leaving she said something about a possible reconciliation with her family, who lived in France; they had not written her since she went on the stage. They were of a respectability!—of the old tradition! But if they came round she might take the child to them, if her husband would consent. She should like it to be brought up in France—
"Here the Mother Superior interrupted her sharply. Was her husband a Frenchman? And she answered, no doubt before she thought, for these people always forget something, that no, he was an American—her family, also, detested Americans. The Mother Superior once more interrupted her glibness. How, then, did he have a French name? Oh, but that was her stage name—she always went by it and had given it without thinking. What was her husband's name? After a second's hesitation she stupidly give the name Smith. I can see the mouth of the Mother Superior as it set in a grim line. 'Very well,' said she, 'the child's name is Hélène Smith'; and although the woman made a wry face she was forced to submit.
"The child remained there four years, and the Mother Superior had some reason to believe that 'Madame Dubois' spent a good part of that time in San Francisco. She came at irregular intervals to see the child—always in vacation, when there were no pupils in the convent, and always at night. The Mother Superior, however, thought it best to make no investigations, for the child throve, they were all daffy about her, and the money came promptly on the first of every month. When the mother came she always brought a trunk full of fine underclothes, and left the money for a new uniform. Then, one day, Madame Dubois arrived in widow's weeds, said that her husband was dead, leaving her quite well off, and that she was returning to France."
"And Madame Delano's story is that he died on the way to Japan—if it is the same woman—"
"Haven't a doubt of it myself. I did a little cabling before I left last night to a man I know in Paris to find out just when Madame Delano returned with her child to live with her family in Rouen. He got busy and here is his answer—just fifteen years ago almost to the minute."
"Then who was her husband?"