rselves to hear something
that, at first, sounds very trying. The man whom you've heard of as
John Braden, who came to his death--by accident, as I now firmly
believe--there in Paradise, was, in reality, John Brake--your father!"

Ransford looked at his two listeners anxiously as he told this. But he
met no sign of undue surprise or emotion. Dick looked down at his toes
with a little frown, as if he were trying to puzzle something out; Mary
continued to watch Ransford with steady eyes.

"Your father--John Brake," repeated Ransford, breathing more freely now
that he had got the worst news out. "I must go back to the beginning
to make things clear to you about him and your mother. He was a close
friend of mine when we were young men in London; he a bank manager;
I, just beginning my work. We used to spend our holidays together in
Leicestershire. There we met your mother, whose name was Mary Bewery. He
married her; I was his best man. They went to live in London, and from
that time I did not see so much of them, only now and then. During those
first years of his married life Brake made the acquaintance of a man who
came from the same part of Leicestershire that we had met your mother
in--a man named Falkiner Wraye. I may as well tell you that Falkiner
Wraye and Stephen Folliot were one and the same person."

Ransford paused, observing that Mary wished to ask a question.

"How long have you known that?" she asked.

"Not until today," replied Ransford promptly. "Never had the ghost of
a notion of it! If I only had known--but, I hadn't! However, to go
back--this man Wraye, who appears always to have been a perfect master
of plausibility, able to twist people round his little finger, somehow
got into close touch with your father about financial matters. Wraye was
at that time a sort of financial agent in London, engaging in various
doings which, I should imagine, were in the nature of gambles. He was
assisted in these by a man who was either a partner with him or a very
confidential clerk or agent, one Flood, who is identical with the man
you have known lately as Fladgate, the verger. Between them, these two
appear to have cajoled or persuaded your father at times to do very
foolish and injudicious things which were, to put it briefly and
plainly, the lendings of various sums of money as short loans for their
transactions. For some time they invariably kept their word to him, and
the advances were always repaid promptly. B