They walked away chatting mechanically until they were in a garden seat behind the rose-bench.  The rose-bench was a rather sorry affair, for it had been set out in this exposed place by a former gardener who had forgotten that the direct winds from the Sound are malgracious to roses.  However, it screened the two, and was far enough removed so that ordinary tones would not carry to the house.

“Did your grandmother get you word about the police?” Maggie asked with suppressed excitement as soon as they were seated.

“Yes.  She came out here about midnight.”

“Then why, while you still had time, didn’t you get farther away from New York than this?”

“If I’m to be caught, I’m to be caught; in the meantime, this is as safe a place as any other for me.  Besides, I wanted to have at least one more talk with you—­after something new grandmother told me about you.”

“Something new about me?” echoed Maggie, startled by his grave tone.  “What?”

“About your father,” he said, watching closely for the effect upon her of his revelations.

“What about my father?  What’s he been doing that I don’t know about?”

“You do not know a single thing that your father has done.”

“What!”

“Because you do not know who your father is.”

“What!” she gasped.

“Listen, Maggie.  What I’m going to tell you may seem unbelievable, but you’ve got to believe it, because it’s the truth.  I can see that you have proofs if you want proofs.  But you can accept what I tell you as absolute facts.  You are by birth a very different person from what you believe yourself.  Your father is not Jimmie Carlisle.  And your mother—­”

“Larry!” She tensely gripped his arm.

“Your mother was of a good family.  I imagine something like Miss Sherwood’s kind—­though not so rich and not having such social standing.  She died when you were born.  She never knew what your father’s business actually was; he passed for a country gentleman.  He was about the smoothest and biggest crook of his time, and a straight crook if there is such a thing.”

“Larry!” she breathed.

“He kept this gentleman-farmer side of his life and his marriage entirely hidden from his crook acquaintances; that is, from all except one whom he trusted as his most loyal friend.  Before you were old enough to remember, he was tripped up and sent away on a twenty-year sentence.”

“And he’s—­he’s still in prison?” whispered Maggie.

Larry did not heed the interruption.  “He had developed the highest kind of ambition for you.  He wanted you to grow up a fine simple woman like your mother—­something like Miss Sherwood.  He did not want you ever to know the sort of life he had known; and he did not want you to be handicapped by the knowledge that you had a crook for a father.  He still had intact your mother’s fortune, a small one, but an honest one.  So he put you and the money in the hands of his trusted friend, with the instructions that you were to be brought up as the girls of the nicest families are brought up, and believing yourself an orphan.”