f?" asked Link calmly.

"I guess not, though it's enough, I should say. My husband had a mark on
his right cheek--got it fighting a duel with a German student when he
was having a high time as one of the boys at Heidelberg. Then he lost
part of his little finger--left-hand finger--in an accident out West.
What other proof do you want, Mr. Link?"

"The proofs you have given seem sufficient, Mrs. Vrain, but may I ask
when your husband left his home?"

"About a year ago, eh, poppa?"

"You are overdoing it, Lyddy," corrected the father. "Size it up as ten
months, and you'll do."

"Ten months," said Lucian suddenly, "and Mr. Berwin----"

"Vrain!" struck in Lydia, the widow, "Mark Vrain."

"I beg your pardon! Well, Mark Vrain took the house in Geneva Square six
months back. Where was he during the other four?"

"Ask me something easier, Mr. Denzil. I know no more than you do."

"Did you not know where he went on leaving Berwin Manor?"

"Sakes! how should I? Mark and I didn't pull together nohow, so he
kicked over the traces and made tracks for the back of beyond."

"And you might square it, Lyddy, by saying as 'twasn't you who upset the
apple cart."

"Well, I should smile to think so," said Mrs. Vrain vigorously. "I was
as good as pie to that old man."

"You did not get on well together?" said Link sharply.

"Got on as well as a cat hitched along with a dog. My stars! there was
no living with him. If he hadn't left me, I'd have left him--that's an
almighty truth."

"So the gist of all this is that Mr. Vrain left you ten months ago, and
did not leave his address?"

"That's so," said the widow calmly. "I've not seen nor heard of him for
most a year, till pop there tumbled across your paragraph in the
papers. Then I surmised from the name and the missing finger and the
scarred cheek, that I'd dropped right on to Mark. I wouldn't take all
this trouble for any one else; no, sir, not me!"

"My Lyddy does not care about being a grass-widow, gentlemen."

"I don't mind being a grass-widow or a real one, so long as I know how
to ticket myself," said the candid Lydia; "but seems to me there's no
question that Mark's sent in his checks."

"I certainly think that this man who called himself Berwin was your
husband," said Denzil, for Mrs. Vrain's eyes rested on him, and she
seemed to expect an answer.

"Well, then, that means I'm Mr. Vrain's widow?"

"I should say so."

"And entitled to all his pile?"

"That d