"Rubbish," he said, in the unceremonious way of addressing her which he had rapidly acquired.
"Oh, very well, if you contradict me flatly—"
"I didn't contradict. I only thought it was another flight of that brilliant fancy of yours."
"It is no fancy, but a solid fact," said she, vehemently, "that nobody knows who Percivale's father was. There! You have it in black and white."
Osmond gave a long whistle, and mused a few minutes in silence. At last—
"Won't do, my friend," said he. "She would never have been allowed to marry a man who could give no account of his antecedents."
"Oh—you think so! You are as clever as all the rest of them! I tell you the man is an adventurer—a mere adventurer! He had no difficulty in bamboozling that old idiot Henry Fowler, who was taken in by him from the first moment he saw him. As for the women, they could none of them see beyond his red beard and his red sash. It is as clever a case of fraud as I ever saw."
Osmond laughed bitterly.
"If it were fraud how can you prove it?" he said. "It is of no use to set indefinite reports afloat. There are hundreds of them already, but nobody believes them. And how can you get at facts?"
"Let me have Mrs. Elsa alone for half-an-hour, and I will engage to know as much as she does by the end of that time."