“Would you rather I went, Mrs. Camber?” asked Val Beverley.
Mrs. Camber reached across and took her hand.
“Please, no,” she replied. “Stay here with me. I am afraid it is rather a long story.”
“Never mind,” I said. “It will be time well spent if it leads us any nearer to the truth.”
“Yes?” she questioned, watching me anxiously, “you think so? I think so, too.”
She became silent, sitting looking straight before her, the pupils of her blue eyes widely dilated. Then, at first in a queer, far-away voice, she began to speak again.
“I must tell you,” she commenced “that before—my marriage, my name was Isabella de Valera.”
I started.
“Ysola was my baby way of saying it, and so I came to be called Ysola. My father was manager of one of Señor Don Juan’s estates, in a small island near the coast of Cuba. My mother”—she raised her little hands eloquently—“was half-caste. Do you know? And she and my father—”
She looked pleadingly at Val Beverley.