“The old man must have put the ring on your finger. Oh, if he would only go away and not sit outside and moan!” “Why? What is it to him?” Even then she could not tell him. She turned away. “Call the man,” said Heriot sharply. Andria never looked up as the forlorn wretch shambled in and stared at Heriot with lack-luster eyes. What would he tell? or, rather, what would Salome make of it in her translation? “She is gone,” he said slowly in Spanish. “This time it is forever.” Andria started. Heriot understood--was answering him in as good Spanish as his own. Salome stood goggle-eyed, straining every nerve to comprehend. Only to Andria was it an incomprehensible medley of sounds. “What does he say, Salome? Tell me,” she ordered frantically; but Salome only waved her aside and groaned aloud. It seemed hours as the words she could not understand went on. “It’s a lie, Mr. Heriot!” broke out Salome fiercely. “She ain’t look like him; she ain’t be like him----” But the words died on her tongue remembered how the girl had mastered the jaguar as it ravened at the bars. So the secret was out! “Salome, hush--wait!” cried Andria frantically. “Mr. Heriot, stop him; tell me what he says.” “He wanders,” said Heriot; his bloodless face was ghastly. “He’s mad; he’s--my God, he says she’s his daughter!” “Then it was true.” Andria covered her face. “I knew; Egerton told me--let it slip,” she whispered. “But it is her mother who must have been his child, not she.” She thought of the strange moods of the girl, her miraculous power over animals, of the strain that must be hereditary in her young blood. “This is the story,” said Heriot. His face was set. “Erceldonne and another man came here in a yacht. The second man never came up to the house, apparently; certainly never had anything to do with the girl.” (Oh, the pity of that first girl’s silence about the man who truly never came to the house, but who met her in secret, unknown!) “And Erceldonne came every day, and the girl would have nothing to say to him--hated him. One day the old man heard her scream--not once--many times. He ran down to the shore, and was just in time to see Erceldonne put her into a boat and shove off with her. He had no boat himself, and I think he must have had a fit there in the sun. For all he knows after that is that he lost all his money in Brazilian bonds; he couldn’t follow her. The servants apparently all left him; he used to sit all day on the shore with his jaguars--and one day Erceldonne came back.” “Well?” said Andria breathlessly, for Heriot paused. “He said he never took the girl; that she left the yacht that same night with the other man--all lies, of course. He landed with men and guns, shot the jaguars--though two of them got off into the woods without his knowledge--and, of all things--offered to buy the house from the miserable father; wanted him to take the money and go and look for the girl.”