“Sir, is it within your knowledge that when your son left Italy for America he took with him—a wife?”
At these words Sir Gilbert’s jaw dropped, a curious glaze came over his eyes and his fingers began to twitch spasmodically. The Captain sprang to his feet; he was on the point of ringing for help, but a gesture on the part of the baronet restrained him.
“I shall be better in a minute or two,” he said in a hoarse whisper. Verinder crossed to the window. Two or three minutes passed, then a hollow changed voice said: “What proof have you that your most strange statement is true?”
“The most convincing of all proofs, Sir Gilbert—a living one. Your son’s wife—or widow, as I ought rather to term her—is in London at this moment.”
“Alive?—and I have known nothing of her existence all these years! It is incredible, sir—incredible. I am being made the victim of some vile conspiracy.”
“Conspiracy, indeed! Nothing of the kind, sir, I give you my word—the word of an officer and a gentleman—hem! I condescend to overlook your words, Sir Gilbert, in consideration of the singularity of the circumstances, otherwise——”
The rest of the sentence was drowned in a cough. He said no more, but twisted one end of his moustache viciously, and scowled at the chandelier.
“It is incredible,” Sir Gilbert kept murmuring under his breath without heeding Verinder. The latter waited patiently. One half his tale, and that the more amazing half, had yet to be told. At length Sir Gilbert seemed to pull himself together. Turning on his visitor a face which seemed even more sternly set than usual, he said: “Assuming for the moment, sir, the accuracy of what you have just told me—which, mind you, at present I am by no means prepared to admit—will you be good enough to inform me who and what the—the person was with whom my son was so foolishly weak as to contract a secret marriage.”
It was a question for which the Captain had prepared himself, and he answered it on the moment.
“The lady in question was born in Italy, her father being a native of that country, and her mother an Englishwoman. Signor Rispani was a scion of an impoverished patrician family which can boast of I know not how many quarterings with other families as noble as itself.”