r taken note of
these?"

He spoke with deliberate emphasis, narrowly watching the effect of his
words.

Olga's hands were gripped fast together; her wide eyes searched his
face.

"Oh, tell me what you mean!" she entreated, a piteous quiver in her
voice. "Tell me plainly what you mean!"

"I will," he said. "Violet Campion's mother was a homicidal maniac. She
killed her husband--this girl's father--in a fit of madness one night
three months after their marriage. It happened in India, and was put
down to native treachery in order to hush it up, but it was well known
that no native was responsible for it. During the six months that
followed, she was kept under restraint, hopelessly insane. It was in her
blood--the worst form of insanity known. At the birth of the child she
died. That will explain to you my exact meaning, and if you need
corroboration you can go to Max Wyndham for it. She has begun to develop
symptoms of her mother's complaint. All her peculiarities arise from
incipient madness!"

"Oh, no!" Olga whispered, with fingers straining against each other.
"It's not possible! It's not true!"

"It is absolutely true," he said. "And you know it is true. At the same
time it is just possible that the disease may be arrested. Wyndham
himself will tell you this. We discussed the matter quite recently. It
may be arrested even for years if nothing happens to precipitate it. Of
course her people will never let her marry, but she is not, I fancy, the
sort of young woman to whom wedded bliss is essential. Naturally, all
this has been kept from her. There are not many people who know of it. I
am one, because I knew her mother both before and after her marriage,
being a young subaltern at the time and stationed at the very place
where the tragedy occurred. Wyndham is another, being the _protege_ of
Kersley Whitton to whom the girl's mother was engaged and who was the
first to discover the fatal tendency. She married Campion mainly out of
pique because Whitton threw her over. He was a man of sixty, and his son
was grown up at the time. I have often thought that he behaved with
remarkable magnanimity when he adopted the child of the woman who had
murdered his father."

Olga shivered suddenly and violently. The horror of the tale had turned
her cold from head to foot. She no longer questioned the truth of it.
She knew beyond all doubting that it was true.

The sun still shone gloriously, and the yacht slipped on through