“Never was drowned?” he echoed, feebly.
“No! Never was drowned!” repeated Sophy, firmly. “She ran away from you—and no wonder! You were always a bore,—and she was always being reproached as an ‘old maid’ and ‘in the way.’ She slaved for you and her mother from morning till night and never had a kind word or a thank-you. I advised her to break away from the hum-drum life you made her lead, and on that morning when you thought her drowned, she came to me! Ah, you may stare! She did! She saw an advertisement in a French paper of a scientist in Geneva wanting a lady assistant to help him in his work, and she went there to try for the situation and got it. I rigged her out and lent her some money. She’s paid it all back, and for all I know she’s in Geneva still, though she’s under an agreement not to write to anyone or give her address. She’s been gone a year now.”
Mr. May’s dumpy form stiffened visibly.
“May I ask,” he said, pompously—“May I ask, Miss Lansing, why you have not thought proper to communicate these—these strange circumstances to me before?”
Sophy laughed.
“Because I promised Diana I wouldn’t,” she answered. “She knew and I knew that you and Mrs. May would be perfectly happy without her. She has taken her freedom, and I hope she’ll keep it!”
“Then—my daughter is—presumably—still alive?” he said. “And instead of dying, she has—well!—deserted us?”
“Exactly!” replied Sophy. “I would give you the name of the scientist for whom she is or was working, only I suppose you’d write and make trouble. When I had, as I thought, a letter from her the other day, saying she was returning to London, I got everything ready here to receive her—but when this artful girl turned up——”
“Oh, the girl came to see you, did she?” Mr. May mumbled. “The—the adventuress——?”
“Of course she did!—and actually brought me my watch-bracelet—one I had lent to Diana—as a sort of proof of identity. But of course nothing can make a woman of forty a girl of eighteen!”