Now—­for all this, listening with my ears wide open, and sometimes filling in what was not told me in words, I gathered from the men before they left the house—­as it chanced the dying lord could not have chosen two worse people for such an errand, seeing that although the son was honest, both of them were interested in proving the tale to be false.  Since that time, however, often I have thought that he knew this himself, and trusted by the choice both to cheat his own conscience and to preserve the wealth and dignity for his son.  God, to whom he has gone, alone knows the truth of it, but with such a man it may very well have been as I think.  I say that both were interested, for it seems, as he told me afterwards, that the lawyer was to receive a great sum—­ten thousand pounds—­under the will of the dead lord for whom he had done much during his lifetime.  But if Ralph were proved to be the heir this sum would have been his and not the lawyer’s, for the money was part of his father’s inheritance; therefore it was worth just ten thousand pounds to that lawyer to convince himself and the false lord that Ralph was not the man, and therefore it was that I found him so easy to deal with.

Now after his father was dead the lawyer tried to persuade the son to take no notice of his dying words, and to let the matter rest where it was, seeing that he had nothing to gain and much to lose.  But this he would not consent to, for, as I have said, he was honest, declaring that he could not be easy in his mind till he knew the truth, and that if he did not go to find it out himself he would send others to do so for him.  As the lawyer desired this least of anything, he gave way, and they set out upon their journey—­which in those days was a very great journey indeed—­arriving at last in safety at our stead in the Transkei; for, whether he liked it or not, his companion—­who now was called Lord Glenthirsk—­would not be turned aside from the search or suffer him to prosecute it alone.

At length, when all the tale was told, the lawyer looked at me with his sharp eyes and said, through the interpreter: 

“Vrouw Botmar, you have heard the story, tell us what you know.  Is the young man who lives with you he whom we seek?”

Now I thought for a second, though that second seemed like a year.  All doubt had left me, there was no room for it.  Ralph and no other was the man, and on my answer might hang his future.  But I had argued the thing out before and made up my mind to lie, though, so far as I know, it is the only lie I ever told, and I am not a woman who often changes her mind.  Therefore I lied.

“It is not he,” I said, “though for his sake I might wish that it were, and this I can prove to you.”