"Is this a fact, Penfield?" asked Robert gravely. Horace had at least succeeded in impressing him.
"True as I'm sitting here. There's absolutely no doubt about it. Yes, I've got down to the secret of that old lost and found mine of yours." He chuckled at his wit. "But," his complacency increasing to the point of exultation, "that isn't all I know, by any means. All winter long I've been bothering my head about those butterflies the women are wearing, and now, at last, I've got a line on them."
His voice sounded curiously far away to Hayden and he did not at once take in the meaning of the words. His head was whirling. So, that middle‑aged, gray‑haired man was really the owner of the mine, and it was for him that Marcia—No, he would not think of it. He would not let those torturing doubts invade his mind. With every force of his nature he would again resist them and bar them out.
"Yes," Penfield was gloating, "I'm on to the butterflies, at last."
"Why should you imagine that they have any special significance?" Hayden's voice sounded faint and dull in his ears.
"Because I have a nose for news, Hayden. I was born with it. I feel news in the air. I scent it and I'm rarely mistaken. I said to myself last November, those butterflies mean something, and I intend to get to the bottom of them. And where do you think they led me? Oh, you will be interested in this, Hayden," smiling. "They led me right to the root of Marcia Oldham's secret."
Hayden threw up his head, a flash of anger on his spiritless face. "You can't discuss Miss Oldham here, Penfield."
"Oh, easy now," returned Horace cynically. "It's nothing to her discredit, far from it. You remember the night you suggested that she might live by the sale of her pictures, and I scoffed at you and said that all the pretty little pictures she could paint in a year wouldn't keep her in gowns? Well, you were nearer right than I for once."
A light came into Hayden's face. He opened his mouth as if about to speak.
"Now, just wait," Horace admonished him. "The reason your suggestion struck me as ridiculous was this: One must have a reputation to make a decent living as an artist, and who ever heard of the Oldham pictures? Where were they on exhibition? Who bought them? Nothing in it, you see." He moved his hand with a gesture of finality. "But," impressively, "Marcia Oldham can paint just the same, and beautifully; but that is not all she can do. It appears that as a child she very early showed a marked artistic talent. Her mother always disliked it; though her father encouraged it in every way; but she developed a rather peculiar bent, and in the years that she spent abroad she devoted herself to the designing and making of jewelry and objets d'art. Her especial fad, you know, were those exquisite translucent enamels, just like her butterflies.