Martha had known, of course, that there had been bankruptcy and ruin; that Oakdale, the ancestral estate of the O’Days—­theirs for two centuries, with all its priceless old furniture, tapestries, pictures, and porcelains—­had, after the owner’s death, been sold at public auction; that Fernlodge, Mr. Felix’s own home, had gone in the same way; that Lady Barbara, for some reason, had returned to her father, Lord Carnavon; that the girl baby had died; and that “Mr. Felix,” as she always called him, had gone to London where he had taken up his abode at his club.  Lady Barbara herself had given these details in a letter written a couple of weeks after the death of the child, Martha being in Toronto at the time.

Martha had also learned, through a letter from the head gardener’s wife, that after a few months’ stay, Lady Barbara had left her father’s house because of a fierce scene with Lord Carnavon, who had sent for his carriage, conducted her into it, and given directions to his coachman either to set his daughter down on the main road, outside his gates, or to take her to the nearest public house.

She had learned, too, that her former charge, after having eloped with Dalton, had dropped entirely out of sight and, so far as her own knowledge was concerned, had never come to light again until, with a cry of joy, Lady Barbara sank sobbing on her shoulder in that Third Avenue car.

Much of this information had been gathered from newspaper clippings that her old uncle, living in London, had mailed to her.  More particulars had come in a letter from James Muldoon, one of the grooms at Oakdale, who gave a most pitiful and graphic account of the way the London dealers crowded about the old porcelains in the ebony cabinets, and of the prices paid by the Earl of Brinsmore, who bought most of the pictures, half of the old Spanish furniture, as well as the largest but one of the great tapestries, to enrich the new mansion he was then building in London and in which James Muldoon was happy to say he had been promised a place.

In still other letters, open references had also been made to a much discussed speculation, entangling many of those whom Martha had formerly known, followed by a grand financial explosion in which some of the same people had been badly injured.  In connection with these disasters mention was likewise made of a certain Mr. Dalton, who had disappeared shortly after, leaving rather a bad name behind him, altogether undeserved, according to many of the papers, he always having been a “financier of the highest standing.”  This last ball of gossip was rolled Martha’s way by her nephew, who was a clerk in a solicitor’s office off the Strand and who had mailed an editorial on the matter to his uncle, who promptly forwarded it to Martha.  She had read it carefully to the end and had put it in her drawer without at first grasping the full meaning of the fact that, but for the activities of this same Mr. Dalton, her dear mistress and her dear mistress’s husband, Felix O’Day, and her dear mistress’s father-in-law, the late Sir Carroll O’Day, would still be in possession of their ancestral estates and in undisturbed enjoyment of whatever happiness they, individually and collectively, could get out of life.