“Thank Heaven, you are alive,” he said.
“Why should I not be?” asked Carl, bewildered, turning to Ashcroft.
“Your stepmother had the—let me say imprudence, to tell your father that you had been killed on the railroad.”
“Where could she have heard such a report?”
“I am not sure that she heard it at all,” said Ashcroft, in a low voice. “She knew that your father had heart disease.”
CHAPTER XL.
CONCLUSION.
At this moment Mrs. Crawford re-entered the room.