‘And she is to be your wife. She will have the full benefit of all I leave you. Were it left to her—settled upon her ever so tightly, for her sole use and benefit, and so on, as the lawyers have it—you would have the advantage all the same. She would surrender all her rights to you. But she would do something worse than that. She has a foolish sentimental idea about that infamous father of hers; she would let him share the money. That is why I bequeath everything to you.’ ‘The precaution is needless, sir,’ replied Lucius gravely. ‘I have reason to know that your son no longer lives to trouble you or his daughter.’ ‘You have reason to know!’ cried the old man angrily. ‘What do you know about my son? And why have you withheld your knowledge from me until this moment?’ ‘Because it is only within the last few weeks that I have discovered your son’s identity with a man I met in America, and I did not care to disturb you by any allusion to an agitating subject.’ ‘Who was this man?’ ‘You will not speak of this to Lucille? She knows nothing—she must know nothing of—of her father’s death,’ said Lucius, with painful eagerness. He had spoken rashly, and found himself, as it were, caught in the meshes of his own ill-advised admission. ‘She shall know nothing, if you insist upon it. For God’s sake, don’t trifle with me. Is my son dead?’ He asked the question with as agonising an anxiety as if the son he had long ago renounced were at this moment the idol of his heart. ‘I have good reason to believe that he is dead.’ ‘That is no answer. Give me details, particulars—time, place, the manner of his death.’ ‘I—I can only tell you what I know,’ answered Lucius, pale to the lips. ‘There was a portrait amongst the lumber in your loft—the portrait of a young man with dark hair and eyes.’ ‘There was but one portrait there,’ answered the old man quickly—‘my son’s.’ ‘That picture resembles a man I once met in America, who, I afterwards heard, was shot.’ ‘How? by whom?’ ‘That I cannot tell you. You must accept the evidence for what it is worth.’ ‘I reject it as worthless. What, you see a picture among the lumber in the loft which reminds you of a face you saw in America—the face of some man who may or may not have been killed in some gold-diggers’ fray, I suppose—and you jump at the conclusion that my son is dead; that the order of nature has been reversed, and the green tree has fallen before the disabled trunk! You tell me, on no better evidence than this, that my dream of revenge has been vain; that my ungrateful son will never hear, with all the pangs of baffled avarice, of his dead father’s wealth—of wealth that might have been his had he been simply honest.’