“Pray listen to me, Robert.  This is no matter for jesting.  I am your cousin, but only in a sense.  In the eyes of the law I am a nameless outcast.  My mother was not Alan’s mother.  I was born before my father married the lady who treated me as her daughter until her death.  My mother was an Italian, who died at my birth, and whom my father never married.”

Frazer looked at the beautiful woman who addressed these astonishing words to him, and amazement, incredulity, a spasm almost of fear, held him dumb.

“It is too true, Robert.  I did not know these things until a few short months ago.  Some one, I believe, told my husband the truth soon after our marriage, and it was this discovery that so changed his feelings towards me.  At first I was utterly unable to explain the awful alteration in his attitude.  Not until I returned to England and settled down at Beechcroft did I become aware of the facts.”

“Surely, Rita, you are romancing?”

“No, there can be no doubt about it.  I have seen the proofs.”

“Proofs!  How can you be certain?  Who made these statements to you?”

“I have been blackmailed, bled systematically for large sums of money.  At first I was beguiled into a correspondence.  My curiosity was aroused by references to my husband and to my father’s will.  Finally, I received copies of documents which made matters clear even to my bewildered brain.  More than that, I was sent a memorandum, written by my father, in which he gave Alan all the particulars, corroborated by extracts from registers, and explaining the reasons which actuated him in framing his will so curiously.  We were never closely knit together, as you know.  I think now that he regarded me as the living evidence of the folly of his earlier years, and perhaps my sensitive nature was quick to detect this hidden feeling.”

“May I ask who blackmailed you?”

Robert’s face grew hard and stern.  The woman experienced a tumultuous joy as she saw it.  She had at least one defender.

“That is the hard part of my story,” she murmured, in a voice broken with emotion.  “The correspondence took place with a man named Ooma, a person I never even met at that time, and—­can you believe it, Robert—­within the past few days I have good reason to know that he is the murderer of my brother, the man who endeavoured to kill both you and David.”

Frazer caught her by the shoulder.

“Rita,” he said, “what has come to you?  Are you hysterical, or dreaming?”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, believe me!” she moaned.  “Mr. Brett knows it is true.  What is worse, he knows that I know it.  I cannot bear this terrible secret any longer.  I went to this man’s house in London the other night, and boldly charged him with the crime.  He denied it, but I could see the lie and the fear in his eyes.  To avoid a terrible family scandal I came here with you all.  But I can bear it no longer.  God help me and pity me!”