His wife, by her speech, showed herself to be a woman of refinement. She had been the widow of a medical man in Manchester before Diamond had married her. Though it was much against her grain to submit to registration as a foster-mother of children, yet it had been their only course. Raymond Diamond was too ugly to succeed in his profession. The public dislike a deformed doctor.
He told his wife how he had been at the end of his resources in Paris, and how, just at the moment when things had looked blackest, “Red Mullet” had returned. But he made no mention of meeting the stranger, or of the record of the curious secret which, between two pieces of cardboard, now reposed carefully in his breast-pocket.
Its possession held him in a kind of stupor. From what he had been able to gather—or rather from what he imagined the truth to be—he already felt himself an immensely wealthy man. He was, in fact, already planning out his own future.
The dead stranger had said he intended to remove to the Grand Hotel. Diamond’s intention was to go further—to purchase a fine estate somewhere in the grass-country, and in future live the life of a gentleman.
Mrs Diamond noticed her husband’s preoccupied manner, and naturally attributed it to financial embarrassment.
A few moments later the door opened, and a pretty, fair-haired girl, about thirteen, entered, and finding the doctor had returned, rushed towards him and, throwing her arms about his neck, kissed him, saying:
“I had no idea you were back again, dad. I went down the station-path half-way, expecting to meet you.”
“I came by the road, my child,” was the Doctor’s reply as he stroked her long fair hair. “I’ve been to Paris—to see your dad, Aggie,” he added.
“My other dad,” repeated the child reflectively. “I—I hardly remember him. You are my own dear old dad!” And she stroked his cheek with her soft hand.
Aggie was the doctor’s favourite. He was devoted to the daughter of that tall, thin man who was such a cosmopolitan adventurer, the child who was now the eldest of his family, and who had, ever since she had arrived, a wee weakly little thing, always charmed him by her bright intelligence and merry chatter.