"And you cannot tell me whether my father is living to-day?"
"I know nothing more of Eric Marville since the night of the wreck."
"You have preserved all your father's letters?"
"Naturally."
Idris here ventured on a very bold request.
"Would it be asking too much to let me see this correspondence, or at least, some part of it?"
"Not if you were to give me a diamond for each word it contained," she said firmly.
"At least, mademoiselle," he continued more humbly, "you will give me the purport of those passages that relate to my father?"
"That would be to compromise myself."