“Sit down,” she said in a low voice. “I’ll tell you the whole story from the beginning. It was true that my father was French, and that he was a vine-grower and wine-maker on a ranch in California, and that my mother, the Irish girl, died there. My father did take me to Paris, but he didn’t put me in a convent school. He left me with his sister, a milliner in one of the little back streets. They were alike, those two, of an ugliness inside and out. For a while he paid for me, and then he didn’t. I think he drank himself to death. My aunt brought me up. She wasn’t a good woman and she was greedy for money. I was pretty, and she had me taught to dance and sing. I was dancing when Aristide Corwin saw me. He was managing a vaudeville company in London then. He took a fancy to me.” Fanchon stopped a moment, pressing her handkerchief against her lips. Then she went on, speaking rapidly and recklessly. “You think it was the old story? _Mais non_, it wasn’t! I was only fifteen and I hated him. I hated his good looks and his showy dress and his coarse voice--but I was a beggar and I was a child, _enfant de Bohème_. My aunt told him he could have me for a price. He must marry me--marry in Paris, too. You know French law? And he was to pay her--about three thousand dollars in your money. She sold me. I was her niece, and she made him marry me. She made me his slave good and fast, for she made me his wife!” “You mean that you were Corwin’s wife, and you never told my brother?” Daniel exclaimed harshly, leaning forward to look at her. She turned, her white, small face shadowed by her wild hair, her eyes smoldering.