She brought her eyes back to his in sharp apprehension.  “Peculiar?  No, never!  What do you mean?”

“Are you quite sure of that?” he insisted.

She began to falter in spite of herself.  “Never, until—­until quite lately.  Never till you gave her those—­abominable—­cigarettes.”

“Believe me, there is no harm whatever in those cigarettes,” he said.  “I smoke them myself constantly.  Try them for yourself if you don’t believe me.  They contain a minute quantity of opium, it is true, but only sufficient to soothe the nerves.  No, those cigarettes are not responsible.  That peculiarity which you have recently begun to notice is due to quite another cause.  Surely you must have always known that she was different from other girls.  Have you never thought her excitable, even unaccountable in some of her actions?  Has she never told you of strange fancies, strange dreams?  And her restlessness, her odd whims, her insatiable craving for morbid horrors, have you never taken note of these?”

He spoke with deliberate emphasis, narrowly watching the effect of his words.

Olga’s hands were gripped fast together; her wide eyes searched his face.

“Oh, tell me what you mean!” she entreated, a piteous quiver in her voice.  “Tell me plainly what you mean!”

“I will,” he said.  “Violet Campion’s mother was a homicidal maniac.  She killed her husband—­this girl’s father—­in a fit of madness one night three months after their marriage.  It happened in India, and was put down to native treachery in order to hush it up, but it was well known that no native was responsible for it.  During the six months that followed, she was kept under restraint, hopelessly insane.  It was in her blood—­the worst form of insanity known.  At the birth of the child she died.  That will explain to you my exact meaning, and if you need corroboration you can go to Max Wyndham for it.  She has begun to develop symptoms of her mother’s complaint.  All her peculiarities arise from incipient madness!”

“Oh, no!” Olga whispered, with fingers straining against each other.  “It’s not possible!  It’s not true!”

“It is absolutely true,” he said.  “And you know it is true.  At the same time it is just possible that the disease may be arrested.  Wyndham himself will tell you this.  We discussed the matter quite recently.  It may be arrested even for years if nothing happens to precipitate it.  Of course her people will never let her marry, but she is not, I fancy, the sort of young woman to whom wedded bliss is essential.  Naturally, all this has been kept from her.  There are not many people who know of it.  I am one, because I knew her mother both before and after her marriage, being a young subaltern at the time and stationed at the very place where the tragedy occurred.  Wyndham is another, being the protege of Kersley Whitton to whom the girl’s mother was engaged and who was the first to discover the fatal tendency.  She married Campion mainly out of pique because Whitton threw her over.  He was a man of sixty, and his son was grown up at the time.  I have often thought that he behaved with remarkable magnanimity when he adopted the child of the woman who had murdered his father.”