"Explain yourself!"
"She is not M. Darcieux's daughter!"
"Eh?"
"I repeat, she is not that villain's daughter."
"What do you mean? M. Darcieux...."
"M. Darcieux is only her step-father. She had just been born when her father, her real father, died. Jeanne's mother then married a cousin of her husband's, a man bearing the same name, and she died within a year of her second wedding. She left Jeanne in M. Darcieux's charge. He first took her abroad and then bought this country-house; and, as nobody knew him in the neighbourhood, he represented the child as being his daughter. She herself did not know the truth about her birth."
The doctor sat confounded. He asked:
"Are you sure of your facts?"
"I spent my day in the town-halls of the Paris municipalities. I searched the registers, I interviewed two solicitors, I have seen all the documents. There is no doubt possible."
"But that does not explain the crime, or rather the series of crimes."