"Is there not a chance," Julian said now, asking a question instead of answering one, "that, after all, we are entirely on a wrong tack, granting even that Sebastian is in a false position--a position that by right is mine?"
"What can you mean? How can we be on a false tack?"
"In this way. Even should it be as I suggest, namely, that he is--well, the wrong man, how is it possible that he should be aware of it; above all, how is it possible that he should know that I am aware of it? He has been at Desolada, and held the position of heir to--to--to my father ever since he was a boy, a baby. If wrong has been done, he was not and could not be the doer of it. Therefore, why should he suspect me of being the right man, and consequently wish to injure me?"
"Surely the answer is clear enough," Beatrix replied. "However innocent he may once have been of all knowledge of a wrong having been done, he possesses that knowledge now--in some way. And," the girl went on, turning her face towards him as she spoke, so that he could see her features plainly in the starlight, "he knows that it is to you it has been done. Would not that suffice to make him meditate harm to you?"
"Yet, granting this, how--how can it be? How can he have discovered the wrongdoing. A wrongdoing that his father--his supposed father--died without suspecting."
"Yes, that is it; that is what puzzles me more than all else," Beatrix exclaimed, "that Mr. Ritherdon should have died without suspecting.' That is it. It is indeed marvellous that he could have been imposed upon from first to last."
Then for a time they rode on in silence, each deep in their own thoughts: a silence broken at last by Beatrix saying--
"Whatever the secret is, I am convinced that one other person knows it besides himself."
"Madame Carmaux?"
"Yes, Madame Carmaux. If we could find out what her influence over him is, or rather what makes her so strong an ally of his, then I feel sure that all would be as clear as day."