“You know what I read.  The certificate of my birth as the daughter of Lucrezia Ferris, unmarried, by Count Spicca who acknowledged the child as his—­and the certificate of your marriage with Lucrezia Ferris, dated—­strangely enough a fortnight after my birth—­and further a document legitimizing me as the lawful daughter of you two.  All these documents are from Monte Carlo.  You will understand why I am in Nice.  Yes—­they are all genuine, every one of them, as I have had no difficulty in ascertaining.  So I am the daughter of Lucrezia Ferris, born out of wedlock and subsequently whitewashed into a sort of legitimacy.  And Lucrezia Ferris is lawfully the Countess Spicca.  Lucrezia Ferris, the cowardly spy-woman who more than half controls my life, the lying, thieving servant—­she robs me at every turn—­the common, half educated Italian creature,—­she is my mother, she is that radiant being of whom you sometimes speak with tears in your eyes, she is that angel of whom I remind you, she is that sweet influence that softened and brightened your lonely life for a brief space some three and twenty years ago!  She has changed since then.

“And this is the mystery of my birth which you have concealed from me, and which it was at any moment in the power of my vile mother to reveal.  You cannot deny the fact, I suppose, especially since I have taken the trouble to search the registers and verify each separate document.

“I gave them all back to her, for I shall never need them.  The woman—­I mean my mother—­was quite right.  I shall not marry Don Orsino Saracinesca.  You have lied to me throughout my life.  You have always told me that my mother was dead, and that I need not be ashamed of my birth, though you wished it kept a secret.  So far, I have obeyed you.  In that respect, and only in that, I will continue to act according to your wishes.  I am not called upon to proclaim to the world and my acquaintance that I am the daughter of my own servant, and that you were kind enough to marry your estimable mistress after my birth in order to confer upon me what you dignify by the name of legitimacy.  No.  That is not necessary.  If it could hurt you to proclaim it I would do so in the most public way I could find.  But it is folly to suppose that you could be made to suffer by so simple a process.

“Are you aware, my father, that you have ruined all my life from the first?  Being so bad, you must be intelligent and you must realise what you have done, even if you have done it out of pure love of evil.  You pretended to be kind to me, until I was old enough to feel all the pain you had in store for me.  But even then, after you had taken the trouble to marry my mother, why did you give me another name?  Was that necessary?  I suppose it was.  I did not understand then why my older companions looked askance at me in the convent, nor why the nuns sometimes whispered together and looked at me.  They knew perhaps that no such name as mine existed.