indeed for your name and address, but I did not feel
at liberty to disclose them before seeing you."

"You were quite right, Mr. Cuthbert," she answered. "I suppose this is
the reason why Mr. Davenant has just told me the whole miserable story."

"It is one reason," he admitted, "but in any case I think that Mr.
Davenant had made up his mind that you should know."

"Mr. Trent, I suppose, talks of this money as a present to me?"

"He did not speak of it in that way," Mr. Cuthbert answered, "but in a
sense that is, of course, what it amounts to. At the same time I should
like to say that under the peculiar circumstances of the case I should
consider you altogether justified in accepting it."

Ernestine drew herself up. Once more in her finely flashing eyes and
resolute air the lawyer was reminded of his old friend.

"I will tell you what I should call it, Mr. Cuthbert," she said, "I will
tell you what I believe it is! It is blood-money."

Mr. Cuthbert dropped his eyeglass, and rose from his chair, startled.

"Blood-money! My dear young lady! Blood-money!"

"Yes! You have heard the whole story, I suppose! What did it sound like
to you? A valuable concession granted to two men, one old, the other
young! one strong, the other feeble! yet the concession read, if one
should die the survivor should take the whole. Who put that in, do you
suppose? Not my father! you may be sure of that. And one of them does
die, and Scarlett Trent is left to take everything. Do you think that
reasonable? I don't. Now, you say, after all this time he is fired
with a sudden desire to behave handsomely to the daughter of his dead
partner. Fiddlesticks! I know Scarlett Trent, although he little knows
who I am, and he isn't that sort of man at all. He'd better have kept
away from you altogether, for I fancy he's put his neck in the noose
now! I do not want his money, but there is something I do want from Mr.
Scarlett Trent, and that is the whole knowledge of my father's death."

Mr. Cuthbert sat down heavily in his chair.

"But, my dear young lady," he said, "you do not suspect Mr. Trent
of--er--making away with your father!'

"And why not? According to his own showing they were alone together when
he died. What was to prevent it? I want to know more about it, and I am
going to, if I have to travel to the Gold Coast myself. I will tell you
frankly, Mr. Cuthbert--I suspect Mr. Scarlett Trent. No, don't interrupt
me. It may seem absurd to