“The old man!” she cried, with a cry that stopped Father Maurice and Andria in their low talk. Beryl dragged her hand from Heriot’s. “Let me go,” she said, “don’t touch me! I am his granddaughter. It was no wonder I could manage the cats. I am like him, I----” “You are no relation to him,” said Father Maurice quietly. “Your mother was his adopted daughter; but he had gone too crazy to remember it. She ran away from him and married Lord Erceldonne’s elder brother. You are their daughter.” “My mother?” she said, in a thick whisper. “Died long ago,” he would not tell her how yet, “and you were stolen and hidden away in the convent. Only Mother Felicitas knew you were the heiress of Erceldonne. The Lord Erceldonne you knew had never any right to the title, which is one of the few that descend in direct line to male or female heirs. You would have been left to die on that island, but for a fortune left you by your mother’s brother. The papers were full of advertisements for you; so, you see, you were suddenly worth more alive than dead. A marriage with you would not only secure the succession to Raimond Erle, but set him and his father on their feet as to money. You would not have been told of your parentage till you were married. A penniless waif might accept without question a husband whom a viscountess in her own right would refuse.” “But Andria! He couldn’t have married me.” “Not if she lived. But he thought her dead. It was she, under Heaven, who saved you. Raimond Erle was married to her by me, at that time a minister in the Presbyterian church, who had given up my charge because I could not preach those things I no longer believed. When he heard, afterward, that I had become a priest of the Catholic church, he made use of it to tell her she was not, nor never had been, his wife. “Wife or no wife, she was a menace to him; he left her to die. The black servant saved her; the madman gave money to her and Mr. Heriot which brought them to England; to Mother Felicitas, to me, who had performed the ceremony Erle dared call null and void.” “Mother Felicitas!” she cried. “Do you mean I must go back to her? I won’t! I’ll----” “Mother Felicitas is dead,” the priest said gravely. “But you are wrong to hate her. She was your friend--in the end. It was she who, when Erceldonne was found tenantless, thought of this Moorland house. She, who, on hearing Mrs. Erle’s story, sent for me, the chaplain of the convent, the only person in all England, by God’s grace, who knew of her marriage. I went to London and discovered Mr. Erle as if by accident; I seemed to believe all he told me. And when I came to this evil house, his wife, Heriot, and the police were at my heels. But I had no time to tell you.” “But Mother Felicitas,” she said incredulously. “She hates me!” “Yes,” he answered slowly, “she hated you, but not as you thought. She was a great sinner, but she died like a martyr. She repented.”