“Yes; but she forfeited all claim to the property according to the conditions of the entail, and was disowned by her father more than twenty years ago.”
“That child gave birth to a son, I’ve been told?” remarked Mr. Faxon, not heeding Mr. Tressalia’s last statement.
“I really cannot say whether it was a son or daughter,” he answered, his lips curling again just a trifle. “Whichever it was, it was illegitimate, and could inherit nothing.”
“If it had been born in wedlock it would have inherited the property which you now hold, would it not?”
“Yes; but it was not born in wedlock, consequently all this argument is utterly useless,” the young marquis said, impatiently.
“Are you quite sure, my lord, of the truth of what you assert?” was the next unruffled query.
“Certainly; it is according to Miss Vance’s own confession to her father; she owned she had been deceived, and that only a mock marriage had been consummated.”
“Is it not barely possible that Miss Vance herself may have been mistaken in the matter?”
“I should think not, when interests of so vital importance were at stake,” Paul Tressalia answered, with something very like a sneer upon his fine face.
The question was so utterly devoid of sense and reason, at least to him, that he could not control it.