damned sight sooner--I beg your pardon, you know what I mean--I would
very much rather been talking to a South American Dago with a pistol at
my head, than having this talk with you, but it's got to be done.

"You know, I suppose, or at any rate your father knows, how I met Carol
and how we fixed it up to go away together. I admit, without any
reserve, that I did take her just as any man like myself, who had had a
pretty hard time for a few years and had come back with a ridiculous
superfluity of money, would have taken such a girl under such
circumstances; that is brutal, but at any rate, it is honest. Well, we
went round the world together, and it was only a fortnight ago--we've
been back three weeks now--that I found out who she was."

"Not from her?" exclaimed Vane, with almost pitiful eagerness.

"No," replied Rayburn, "she would have died first. Over and over again I
tried to get her to tell me who and what she was, because of course it
was perfectly easy to see--well, you know what I mean--but she wouldn't.
It was the one confidence that she never gave me; in fact, when I was
trying to insist upon it, she told me if I opened the subject again, she
would leave me there and then, whatever happened to her."

"Then how did you find out?" asked Vane, in the same dry, hard voice. "I
more than believe you when you say she would never have told you."

"Through the merest accident," replied Rayburn. "A day or two after we
landed, we went to dinner at Verrey's, and we had hardly sat down before
a friend of hers, Miss Russell, came in--well--with a friend, as they
say. She came and spoke to Carol, and the four of us dined together.
The next day Miss Russell came to see Carol, and you know, or perhaps
you don't know, that it was Miss Russell's friend who introduced me to
Carol. I got hold of Miss Russell afterwards--she's as clean-hearted a
girl as ever the Fates--however, you won't agree with me there perhaps,
you don't believe in Fate, I do. But that's neither here nor there. I
told her what I am going to tell you, and she told me Carol's story, and
that is why I am here to-night."

There was a good deal of meaning in the words, but for Vane there was
infinitely more in Rayburn's voice and the half-shamed manner in which
he spoke. Vane felt that if this talk went on much longer, the strain
would be too much for him to bear, for it was his sister, or at least
the daughter of his own mother that this man was talking abou