“I couldn’t tell you the other day because of Julius,” said the woman, in a strangled tone.  “I couldn’t say things before Julius.”  Then, glancing toward the door, she asked breathlessly, “Didn’t Gideon Vetch come with you?”

“Father?” responded Patty, wonderingly.  “Do you want Father to come?”

A smile crossed the woman’s face, and she made a movement as if she wanted to raise her head.  “Do you call him Father?” she returned in a pleased voice.

At the question, Corinna sprang up and made an impulsive step forward.  “Oh, don’t!” she cried out pleadingly.  “Don’t tell her!”

“But he is my father,” Patty’s tone was stern and accusing.  “He is my father.”

The smile was still on the woman’s face; but while Corinna watched it, she realized that it was unlike any smile she had ever seen before in her life—­a smile of satisfaction that was at the same time one of relinquishment.

“They thought I was married to him,” she said slowly.  “Julius thought, or pretended to think, that he could harm him by making me swear that I was married to him.  They gave me drugs.  I would have done anything for drugs—­and I did that!  But the old woman there knows better.  She’s got a paper.  I made her keep it—­about Patty—­”

“Don’t!” cried Corinna again in a sharper tone.  “Oh, can’t you see that you must not tell her!”

For the first time the woman turned her eyes away from the girl.  “It is because of Gideon Vetch,” she answered slowly.  “I may get well again, and then I’ll be sorry.”

“But he would rather you wouldn’t.”  Corinna’s voice was full of pain.  “You know—­you must know, if you know him at all, that he would rather you spared her—­”

“Know him?” repeated the woman, and she laughed with a dry, rattling sound.  “I don’t know him.  I never saw him but once in my life.”

“You never saw him but once.”  The words came so slowly from Patty’s lips that she seemed to choke over them.  “But you said that you knew my mother?”

Again the woman made that dry, rattling sound in her chest.  “Your mother never saw him but once,” she answered grimly.  “She never saw him but once, and that was for a quarter of an hour on the night they were taking her to prison.  I would never have told but for Julius,” she added.  “I would never have told if they hadn’t tried to make out that I knew him, and that he was really your father.  It would ruin him, they said, and that was what they wanted.  But when they bring it out, with the paper they got me to sign, I want you to know that it is a lie—­that I did it because I’d have died if I hadn’t got hold of the drugs—­”

“But he is my father,” repeated Patty quite steadily—­so steadily that her voice was without colour or feeling.