“Then you are not English? I could have sworn you were the most typically English girl I’d ever laid eyes on.”
“My father was a French gentleman—an officer, and a man of position. He died—killed in a duel—when I was very young. I do not remember him at all. My mother brought me away from France at once. She was dreadfully crushed, poor lady. She was the daughter of a very old Scottish house—it had been a runaway love match—and her people, my grandparents——”
“What part of Scotland? What was their name? I am a Scot myself, you know.”
Vestalia paused briefly, and sipped at her wine. “I was going to say—my grandparents behaved so unfeelingly to my mother that she never permitted herself to mention their name. I do not know it myself. I gathered as a child from poor mother’s words that they were extremely wealthy and proud, and had a title in the family. It is not probable that I shall ever learn more. I should not wish to, either, for it was their hard cruelty which broke my mother’s heart. She died two years ago. Poor unhappy lady!”
Mosscrop nodded sympathetically. “And were you left without anything?”
“My mother’s private fortune had been diminished to almost nothing by bad investments and the treachery of others before her death. I had no one to advise me—I was all alone—and the lawyers and others probably robbed me cruelly. Only a few of her old family jewels were left to me—and one by one I had to part with these. Some of them, I daresay, were of great antiquity and priceless value, if I had only known, but I was forced to sell them for a song. There were wonderful signet-rings among them, all with the crest of the family—I suppose it must have been her family—and at first I thought of using it to trace them—but then my girlish pride——”
“What was the crest?” asked David. “Perhaps it wouldn’t be too late, now.”
Again Vestalia hesitated. Then she shook her head. “No; dear mamma’s wishes are sacred to me. I do not wish to learn what she thought it best to keep from me.”
“Well—and when the jewels were all sold?”
“Long before that I had begun to work for my living. I write a good hand naturally. I got employment as a copyist, but that did not last very long. I was ambitious, and I thought I might work my way into literature. But it is a very disheartening career, you know.”