Mr. Egerton broke out into that hoarse cackle of a laugh that always jarred on Andria’s nerves. He had noticed cigar smoke heavy in the shut-up drawing-room the very instant he had entered the house at dawn; had seen the butt of one of his own cigars reposing in a flower-pot. And now the governess’ hasty lie amused him even in his annoyance. A cigar, too, of all things! “Many women do smoke, even cigars,” he said urbanely. “I beg your pardon if I thought you had the habit. It seemed quite possible.” Then he did know about her past when the few women she had known smoked like chimneys! She never remembered having told Salome that Heriot must have cigars; she only wished Egerton would go on. Would he never get to Raimond Erle? She looked at his face and imagined it pleased him to tantalize her. “What does it all mean?” she asked. “Though I suppose it doesn’t matter if we are going away.” “It does matter. I don’t want you to think me a murderer,” he said, so gently that it brought back to her another voice which each minute seemed an hour till she heard. “But I must go back a long way to make you understand. Twenty years ago I saw this place first. I was yachting and found it by chance. The house stood exactly as it does now, but it was surrounded by magnificent gardens, was full of servants and luxury. There were only two people in it, a retired planter of forty, and his daughter. She was the most beautiful person I have ever seen, but that,” hastily, “was not my affair, nor, if her father could help it, any one else’s. I saw then the man was mad. He told me he would shoot the first man who wished to marry his daughter, had brought her here out of the world that she might live and die unmarried; a girl who was more beautiful than any woman alive! “‘He would not have her suffer as women suffered,’ he said. ‘All men were cruel, she should not be at the mercy of any.’ She was his idol. His only other interest was wild animals. He had a regular menagerie--lions, a tiger, jaguars--and he and that girl would play with them as if they were lambs. It used to make my blood run cold to see them. She would sit among the jaguars crooning a queer song”--Andria’s hands that lay on her knees clenched with the effort not to cry out; did he know how dreadful a thing he was telling her? did he mean the madman’s daughter was Beryl’s mother?--“till the beasts came fawning round her like a kitten. Oh, I know it sounds like a fairy-tale! But I saw it.” Only her innate caution, her habit of distrust, kept her from a quick disclosure. Long afterward she knew she had saved her life by holding her peace.