went home and found the house shut up. The concierge told me that my
mother had gone away in a carriage with two gentlemen--he said one
looked like a police agent--nearly a month before. He didn't know where
she'd gone to, and from that day to this I've never heard anything more
of her. I told your son the rest of it and I daresay he has told you,
so there's no need for me to go over it again."

"Yes," said Sir Arthur, nodding slowly, "Vane told me, so if you please
I will ask you one or two more questions, and then I won't detain you
any longer."

"I am in no hurry," she replied. "Please ask me any number you like."

Her manner was now one of deep interest, for a suspicion was already
forming in her mind that this bronzed, grave-faced man had once been her
own mother's husband.

"Thank you," he said. "I should like to ask you first whether you happen
to have any photograph of your mother?"

Miss Carol shook her head decisively, and said:

"No. I had one once in a locket, but when I went home and found she'd
gone away and left me all alone in Paris--that's where we were then--I
was so angry that I took it out and tore it up. I daresay it was very
wrong of me, but I couldn't help it, and to tell you the honest truth, I
can't say that I ever was as fond of her as a daughter should have
been."

"I don't wonder at it," said Sir Arthur, with a sigh.

Miss Carol looked up wonderingly as he said this, but he took no notice
and said:

"But I suppose you would recognise a photograph of her if you saw one?"

"Yes, if it was taken anywhere about the time that I knew her."

"Quite so," said Sir Arthur, taking a leather letter-case out of his
pocket. "This was taken quite twenty years ago, a year or two after we
were married, in short. It is, or was, my wife."

As he took out the photograph he got up, crossed the room, and held it
out to her. Miss Carol got up too, and as she took it she saw that his
hand was trembling. She took the old-fashioned, faded photograph and
looked at it. He saw that her face flushed as she did so. She gave it
back to him and said simply:

"Yes, that is my mother."

As he took the photograph from her he looked at her with sad, grave eyes
across the gulf of sin and shame in which the one great love of his life
had been lost. She was the daughter of his wife, and yet she was not his
daughter--and she was an outcast. The sting of the old shame came back
very keenly. The old wound was already