“Your sister!” he cried--“she is your sister? And she values it, does she? Will you, I wonder, when I tell you that she procured from me by fraud the money with which to pay for it?” “I told you,” said the woman, cold and passionless, “that personally I didn’t hold by them. This one, I know, was beyond our means.” “Do you know what story she invented to augment those means?” “No, sir, I don’t; nor do I intend to ask. I take it that you were her victim in some way. She is a woman of the most resourceful imagination.” “You look upon it in that light? Then I presume, of course, that you are her partner and abettor in the other fraud?” “What fraud?” “Why, this,” said Gilead, with a comprehensive, disdainful gesture--“all the fruits, I am to conclude, of begging at street corners?” “Why is that a fraud?” said the woman. “Not merit but natural qualifications are the key to all success. It is the taking, not the good person, who gets on in the world. If the public likes to pay toll to a lovely face, a sweet voice, why should we disappoint it and starve? We have no other alternative, believe me?” “The child,” said Gilead, still sternly--“is that hers?” “No,” answered the woman; “she hires it. We have neither of us been married, and children as children are hateful to us. I do not think any man could be got to marry my sister Emile. The face behind her veil is ravaged--unsightly. She owes no debt of gratitude to man or God; we neither of us do; they are our enemies. Is that a fraud--the mystery of her veil? Let him answer for it who wove its meshes. She had been beautiful once. Only her voice lives and pleads in a dead land; and with it and through it she obtains these means to the amelioration of her bitter lot--these little toys and graces which her soul loves, and to surround herself with which she suffers and wearies through each livelong day. Call it a fraud if you will. In this inhuman world our souls have ceased to count with us.” Sick at heart, Gilead turned to the door. “Are you going to expose her,” said the woman--“to tear her veil away?” “No,” he answered. “I want fresh air, that’s all.” CHAPTER XII. THE QUEST OF THE OBESE GENTLEMAN Nothing short of the direct interposition of Providence can be held to explain the premature chancing into Gilead’s hands one morning of an ex-official copy of the _Daily Post_. The thing might have happened on any other morning in the year and signified nothing; it happened, _as_ it happened, on the one and only morning on which it could signify a great deal. He invariably read the _Times_ at breakfast, and the other paper, or Nestle’s report on it, on his arrival at the office. Providence, desiring his independent notice of this particular issue, found occasion therefore to slip under his nose a copy of it, brought in, and forgotten, by some casual acquaintance who had sought him for a moment on a personal matter.