She looked up with an inquiring light in her eyes, but did not reply.
"You heard that my invention failed, or rather that it had been forestalled?"
She nodded assent.
"What the failure meant to me only God knew. I had borrowed the money to develop and perfect my idea, and when failure came it was overwhelming. I was stripped of everything. I look back now as upon a long and hideous nightmare. I wonder how I endured?"
He paused for a moment, but she made no reply, but her eyes were full of eager interest.
"Well, when the night was darkest, and I was praying for death as the only escape for me, a letter came from Messrs. Seaward and Graythorne, enclosing a draft for five thousand dollars. The letter was long, and more or less incoherent, but it vaguely hinted that the money was a first instalment of the property left by my father.
"During that day, and I think for several days after, I was almost beside myself with joy. Then I went to see my grandfather, and he and I puzzled over the letter, but we could make very little out of it. In the end he suggested that I should come to America and look after the property myself.
"So I came, and at once called on Messrs. Seaward and Graythorne. Mr. Graythorne I found, but I left his office more perplexed than ever. He talked in generalities, but he appeared to know little or nothing about the matter, though he admitted, of course, sending me the money.
"That night I left New York and made my way to Reboth, where I discovered that no distribution of the property left by my father had been made. That the whole of it was still in Chancery, as we should say in England.