“A few weeks after that he was wounded very badly. I nursed him night and day for weeks, and when he came to England he brought me with him. As you know, sahib, he died. When he was in London he went to see Mrs. Cunningham and the child, and several times to the office of the lawyer who attended your father's funeral. Then he came down to your father, and I know he had long and earnest conversations with him. I did all I could to listen, but the Colonel always had the windows and doors shut before he began to speak. I could see that your father was troubled. Then the Colonel died. After his death I could never find his snuff box; he had carried it about with him for some years; once or twice I had examined it, but it was too small for the diamonds to be hidden in. I suppose that he had given it to the sahib, your father, but as I could never find it I guessed that there was some mystery attached to it, though what I could not tell. “Then your father took me down to Crowswood with him, and Mrs. Cunningham and the little girl came down. I was surprised to find that your father seemed to be master of the estate, and that no one thought anything of the child, whose name had been changed. I spoke one day to Mrs. Cunningham about it; your father seemed to me a just and good man, and I could not believe that he was robbing his brother's daughter. Mrs. Cunningham told me that the Colonel did not wish her to be known as an heiress, and that he had left the estate to his brother until she came of age. Your father was as good a master as the Colonel had been. I watched and watched, and once or twice I overheard him talking to himself in the library, and discovered that your father himself was altogether ignorant of the hiding place of the property that the Colonel had mentioned in his will. I knew then that I should have to wait until the child was either eighteen or twenty-one.