“Deux bocks,” cried the waiter, slapping down on the table two saucers and two stout glass mugs filled with frothing golden liquid.

George, unaccustomed to the ritual of cafes, began at once to sip, but Mr. Ingram, aware that the true boulevardier always ignores his bock for several minutes, behaved accordingly.

“She was evidently extremely rich.  I have had some experience, and I estimate that she had the handling of at least half a million francs a year.  She seemed to be absolutely her own mistress.  You have had an opportunity of judging her style of existence.  However, her attitude towards ourselves was entirely unchanged.  She remained intimate with my wife, who, I may say, is an excellent judge of character, and she was exceedingly kind to our girls, especially Lois—­but Laurencine too—­and as they grew up she treated them like sisters.  Now, Mr. Cannon, I shall be perfectly frank with you.  I shall not pretend that I was not rather useful to Miss Wheeler—­I mean in the Press.  She had social ambitions.  And why not?  One may condescend towards them, but do they not serve a purpose in the structure of society?  Very rich as she was, it was easy for me to be useful to her.  And at worst her pleasure in publicity was quite innocent—­indeed, it was so innocent as to be charming.  Naive, shall we call it?”

Here Mr. Ingram smiled sadly, tasted his bock, and threw away the end of a cigarette.

“Well,” he resumed, “I am coming to the point.  This is the point, which I have learnt scarcely an hour ago—­I was called up on the telephone immediately after you and Lois had gone.  This is the point.  Mr. X was not poor Irene’s uncle, and he had not adopted her.  But it was his money that she was spending.”  Mr. Ingram gazed fixedly at George.

“I see,” said George calmly, rising to the role of man of the world.  “I see.”  He had strange mixed sensations of pleasure, pride, and confusion.  “And you’ve just found this out?”

“I have just found it out from Mr. X himself, whom I met for the first time to-day—­in poor Irene’s flat.  I never assisted at such a scene.  Never!  It positively unnerved me.  Mr. X is a man of fifty-five, fabulously wealthy, used to command, autocratic, famous in all the Stock Exchanges of the world.  When I tell you that he cried like a child ...  Oh!  I never had such an experience.  His infatuation for Irene—­indescribable!  Indescribable!  She had made her own terms with him.  He told me himself.  Astounding terms, but for him it was those terms or nothing.  He accepted them—­had to.  She was to be quite free.  The most absolute discretion was to be observed.  He came to Paris or London every year, and sometimes she went to America.  She utterly refused to live in America.”

“Why didn’t she marry him?”

“He has a wife.  I have no doubt in my own mind that one of his reasons for accepting her extraordinary terms was to keep in close touch with her at all costs in case his wife should die.  Otherwise he might have lost her altogether.  He told me many things about poor Irene’s family in Indianapolis which I will not repeat.  It was true that they had money, as Irene said; but as for anything else ...!  The real name was not Wheeler.”