"She died at sea," he replied. "Her child had been born, and they said that the mother was not strong; that she had never been the same woman after her marriage. Perhaps she fretted after you"--this with a grin and a kick at me under the table that was meant to be facetious. "At all events, the husband was persuaded to take her on a sea voyage, and the child went with them. She fell into a sort of fever--the mother, I mean--and they had to watch her constantly, because it almost seemed that she would take her own life. Then one day her cabin was found to be empty; the ship was searched; but she was gone. A little later the husband found a note written by her; she had made up her mind to end her life, and was only watching for an opportunity to throw herself overboard. She commended the child to his care. And that was the end of her." Barbara dead! It did not seem possible to my mind, even then when I had chapter and verse for it; I could not set aside that vision I had always had of her--as the bright young girl who had met me in the wood twenty years before. I realized bitterly enough that in that, as in all other things, I had been tricked; that while I dreamed of her in my prison cell, and hugged that dear remembrance to myself, she had been in the depths of the sea, dead and forgotten. I woke now to the consciousness that the cruel voice of Jervis Fanshawe was still talking to me. "As for the father--Lucas Savell--he has become a thing of no account. When old Patton died he left the business to Savell--principally, I think, for the sake of the child; and Savell has let it go to rack and ruin. He was a poor creature always--and I think the loss of Barbara finished him. At any rate, he has gone down and down, and they say he drinks. So far as the business is concerned"--Fanshawe shrugged his shoulders and laughed--"well--that's where Murray Olivant comes in." "In what way?" I asked. "Oh, he's a keen blade, is Olivant," said Fanshawe, shaking his head at an imaginary Murray Olivant, and chuckling. "He's always had money--and he always will have it; he's like a bird of prey, ready to stick his talons into the choicest morsels he sees round him. He saw Lucas Savell and the business; he advanced money; and so got a hold here and a hold there, until at last the thing was his. It is supposed to belong to Savell--but he dare not call his soul his own. You needn't look surprised; it has all been a process of years, so gradual that others have not noticed it. Lucas Savell is like a sucked orange, and can be cast aside at any moment." "Why do you hate them so--I mean, apart from Barbara?" I asked.