“Ducaine,” he said, “what relatives have you with whom you are in any sort of communication?”

“None at all!” I answered.

“Sir Michael Trogoldy was your mother’s brother,” he remarked.  “He is still alive.”

“I believe so,” I admitted.  “I have never approached him, nor has he ever taken any notice of me.”

“You did not write to him, for instance, when Heathcote absconded, and you had to leave college?”

“Certainly not,” I answered.  “I did not choose to turn beggar.”

“How much,” he asked, “do you know of your family history?”

“I know,” I told him, “that my father was cashiered from the army for misconduct, and committed suicide.  I know, too, that my mother’s people treated her shamefully, and that she died alone in Paris and almost in poverty.  It was scarcely likely, therefore, that I was going to apply to them for help.”  Ray nodded.

“I thought so,” he remarked grimly.  “I shall have to talk to you for a few minutes about your father.”

I said nothing.  My surprise, indeed, had bereft me of words.  He sipped his wine slowly, and continued.

“Fate has dealt a little hardly with you,” he said.  “I am almost a stranger to you, and there are even reasons why you and I could never be friends.  Yet it apparently falls to my lot to supplement the little you know of a very unpleasant portion of your family history.  That rascal of a lawyer who absconded with your money should have told you on your twenty-first birthday.”

“A pleasant heritage!” I remarked bitterly; “yet I always wanted to know the whole truth.”

“Here goes, then,” he said, filling my glass with wine.  “Your father was second in command at Gibraltar.  He sold a plan of the gallery forts to the French Government, and was dismissed from the army.”

I started as though I had been stung.  Ray continued, his stern matter-of-fact tone unshaken.

“He did not commit suicide as you were told.  He lived, in Paris, a life of continual and painful degeneration.  Your mother died of a broken heart.  There was another woman, of course, whose influence over your father was unbounded, and at whose instigation he committed this disgraceful act.  This woman is now at Braster.”

My brain was in a whirl.  I was quite incapable of speech.

“Her real name,” he continued coolly, “God only knows.  For the moment she calls herself Mrs. Smith-Lessing.  She is a Franco-American, a political adventuress of the worst type, living by her wits.  She is ugly enough to be Satan’s mistress, and she’s forty-five if she’s a day, yet she has but to hold up her finger, and men tumble the gifts of their life into her lap, gold and honour, conscience and duty.  At present I think it highly probable that you are her next selected victim.”