“Why don’t you leave me, Mr. Foster?” she cried passionately, and there were sobs in her voice.  “Why don’t you leave me, and never see me again?”

“Leave you?” I said softly.  “Why?”

“Because I am cursed.  Throughout my life I have been cursed; and the curse clings, and it falls on those who come near me.”

She gave way to hysterical tears; her head bent till it was almost on her knees.  I went to her, and gently raised it, and put a cushion at the back of the chair.  She grew calmer.

“If you are cursed, I will be cursed,” I said, gazing straight at her, and then I sat down again.

The sobbing gradually ceased.  She dried her eyes.

“He is dead,” she said shortly.

I made no response; I had none to make.

“You do not say anything,” she murmured.

“I am sorry.  Sir Cyril was the right sort.”

“He was my father,” she said.

“Your father!” I repeated.  No revelation could have more profoundly astonished me.

“Yes,” she firmly repeated.

We both paused.

“I thought you had lost both parents,” I said at length, rather lamely.

“Till lately I thought so too.  Listen.  I will tell you the tale of all my life.  Not until to-night have I been able to put it together, and fill in the blanks.”

And this is what she told me: 

“My father was travelling through Europe.  He had money, and of course he met with adventures.  One of his adventures was my mother.  She lived among the vines near Avignon, in Southern France; her uncle was a small grape-grower.  She belonged absolutely to the people, but she was extremely beautiful.  I’m not exaggerating; she was.  She was one of those women that believe everything, and my father fell in love with her.  He married her properly at Avignon.  They travelled together through France and Italy, and then to Belgium.  Then, in something less than a year, I was born.  She gave herself up to me entirely.  She was not clever; she had no social talents and no ambitions.  No, she certainly had not much brain; but to balance that she had a heart—­so large that it completely enveloped my father and me.

“After three years he had had enough of my mother.  He got restive.  He was ambitious.  He wanted to shine in London, where he was known, and where his family had made traditions in the theatrical world.  But he felt that my mother wouldn’t—­wouldn’t be suitable for London.  Fancy the absurdity of a man trying to make a name in London when hampered by a wife who was practically of the peasant class!  He simply left her.  Oh, it was no common case of desertion.  He used his influence over my mother to make her consent.  She did consent.  It broke her heart, but hers was the sort of love that suffers, so she let him go.  He arranged to allow her a reasonable income.