She began by telling him of the arrival of the young Englishman, Mr. Alexander, at Catanzaro; of his long stay at the osteria of the Golden Fig; of the coming of two other Englishmen, one of whom proved to be the father of Mr. Alexander, and of their departure next day. Then she proceeded to recount how the young Englishman proposed to her, how she accepted him, and how she did not learn till her marriage-day that her husband’s full name was John Alexander Clare. She made no mention of her father’s discovery by means of the peephole in the ceiling, but simply said, “I knew before my marriage that my husband’s father, on the occasion of his visit, had given him six thousand pounds in English money.” Then she went on to tell of the departure of her husband and herself for America, of the death of their child; and of their subsequent separation, which she made out to have been a matter of mutual arrangement; and wound up by saying, “From that day to this I have heard no tidings of my husband.”
“Neither, I’ll wager, have you ever made any effort to find out who the father was that could afford to give his son six thousand pounds in order to get rid of him,” remarked the Captain when she had come to the end of her narrative.
“No. What business was it of mine?” demanded Vanna with a stare.
“Ah, that’s just the point which you have never thought it worth your while to test. Yet, who can say that it might not have proved to be very much your business indeed?”
Then to himself he added: “This seems to me a little matter which may be worth inquiring into. But, good gracious! to think that there should be such imbeciles in the world as this niece of mine!”
CHAPTER XIV.
THE CAPTAIN TAKES A LITTLE JOURNEY
The more Captain Verinder turned over in his mind the chief points of the story told him by his niece, the more convinced he became that it was indeed, as he had remarked to himself at the time, a matter worth inquiring into.
The Captain, when once he had made up his mind to any particular course of action, was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet. His first proceeding was to seek out a certain billiard-room acquaintance of the name of Tring—a man who had got through two fortunes in his time and was now reduced to earning a scanty livelihood by literary hackwork at the British Museum. Having given him the particulars of the information he required, the Captain met him by appointment a couple of days later.
“The only person I can find,” said Tring, “of the name specified by you that seems likely to answer to your requirements, is a certain Sir Gilbert Clare, of Withington Chase, Hertfordshire, the representative of one of the oldest titles in the kingdom.”
Captain Verinder, having taken a note of the name and address in his pocket-book and paid the other for his trouble, went his way. His next step, the following morning, was to call on Giovanna with a request for the loan of ten pounds.