"But now a new element has entered into the situation. Your mother had not even then confided in me the whole of your uncle's story. Her affection for him and her pride in the good name of the family had kept her lips closed. A day or two ago she told me more. This has a relation to you, but not, I trust, Richard, a very vital relation. I wish she had told me long ago. I have hoped it would not be necessary to tell you--perhaps it isn't really necessary now." Richard's face expressed a mild curiosity. His father seemed to be making a great deal of nothing. "When you were in Baltimore, Mrs. Scott came to see your mother and told her, with all her impertinence, that you had been spending a good deal of time with Eleanor Bent. Your mother said in response that Eleanor was a bright, pretty girl and that it was your affair." Richard felt that now his father was a very direct and satisfactory _raconteur_. "That night, while we waited for you to come home, your mother told me the whole story of your uncle. He was attached, it seems, to Margie Ginter, the daughter of the tavern-keeper, and it was she whom he followed away. Your mother had come upon them in the twilight, and had overheard a conversation between them." "Mother is suspicious," said Richard. "From their conversation she had every reason to suspect a close intimacy. At any rate, they went away and Basil went away. Sometime after his death, this Margie returned with a little girl." Richard's eyes darkened. The cloud had increased in size. His father regretted the orderly way in which he had presented the facts, one after the other. He wished that he had said abruptly, "Eleanor Bent is your first cousin, and if there is anything between you it must end." "Here she stayed, Richard." Richard seemed still more puzzled than alarmed. "You mean Mrs. Bent? But she is a widow, her name is Bent. What an atrocious suspicion!" Dr. Lister raised his hand. "Quietly, Richard! Your mother will hear!" Richard's blazing eyes said that that made little difference. "I know that she calls herself Mrs. Bent and her name may be Mrs. Bent. The point is that her daughter is like Basil." He quoted unconsciously from Mrs. Lister's sentences. "She walks like him, her coloring is like his, her eyes are his, and she has begun to show talent like his." "I should need better proof than that!" declared Richard. "I needed more proof also, and so I went to the little town in Ohio where the Ginters were said to have gone. That is where I have been. The father and daughter and a tall young man who was superior to them are dimly remembered. They didn't stay long. Marysville, it seemed, could not endure Ginter. I talked to the Squire." "My Uncle Basil may have married her and afterwards she may have married a second time!" "It is possible," agreed Dr. Lister. "I hope that is the way of it."