"Yes, Arthur, my brother Arthur. Ah! I forgot. You do not understand the wheels within wheels of all this strange discovery. Sir Arthur Congreve is my brother, and——"
"Your brother?" Christina's tone rang with amazement, and the doctor started.
"My brother; and if my surmises are correct, which I am sure they are, he is your uncle."
"How funny," Christina said, a little twinkle in her eyes; "and he very nearly handed his own niece over to the police—if it is all really true. Only it seems like some sort of wonderful fairy tale, that couldn't possibly be true."
"How do you account for the pendant which, according to Sir Arthur, belongs to his wife, Lady Congreve, being in Miss Moore's possession," Fergusson here put in. "I do not doubt Miss Moore for an instant—not for a single instant—but why was Sir Arthur so sure she was wearing his wife's jewel?"
"Because the pendant Miss Moore wears, is an exact replica of the one belonging to Lady Congreve," Margaret answered composedly; "but I do not suppose either Arthur or his wife have the least idea that the pendant was ever copied."
"Copied?" Christina echoed.
"Yes. The pendant belonging to Arthur's wife, is an heirloom in our family, passing always to the wife of the eldest son. But Helen, your mother, dear—I am quite sure she was your mother—was the eldest of we three. Helen first, next Arthur, and then me. I was the baby. And because Helen was her firstborn and, I think, her favourite child, our mother had the family pendant copied for her after she went away. The initials are the initials of an ancestor of ours to whom the pendant belonged. A.V.C.—Amabel Veronica Congreve."
"But my mother never saw her own mother, or any of her people, after she first left them," Christina said. "They were angry with her for marrying my father. She never saw them again."
"No, she never saw them again. Both she and I—married against their wishes, and after I—left my old home, I never went back to it any more. But I think our mother's heart must have yearned over Helen, for she had that pendant copied, just as I said, and she sent it to Helen. She told me so herself. I did not leave home till three years later than Helen."