“Yes; it’s a good story. You ought to be a novelist, Harney.” There was no answer, and, looking into the chair, he saw that Harney had fallen into a sodden sleep, curled against the chair-back, his chin sunk on his breast, the hollows in his face looking black in the hard light of the gas. The younger man gazed at him for a moment with an expression of slight, cold disgust, then turned back to the table and sat down. He wrote no more, but sat motionless, his eyes fixed on vacancy, the thick, curling smoke oozing from the bowl of his pipe and issuing from between his lips. His thoughts reviewed every part of the story he had heard. He felt certain of its truth. The drunken job-printer had never imagined it. It explained many things that before had puzzled him. Why the Moreaus, even in the days of their affluence, had lived in such uneventful quietude, bringing up their beautiful and talented daughter in a jealous and unusual seclusion. It explained Shackleton’s interest in the girl. He even saw now, recalling the two faces, the likeness that the father himself had seen in Mariposa’s firmly-modeled jaw and chin, which did not belong to the soft, feminine prettiness of Lucy. It must be true. And, being true, what possibilities might it not develop? Mrs. Shackleton knew it, too--that this penniless girl was the bonanza king’s eldest and only legitimate child, with power, if not entirely to dispossess her own children, at least to claim the lion’s share of the vast fortune. If Mariposa had proof of her mother’s marriage to Shackleton and of her own identity as the child of that marriage, she could rise and claim her heritage--her part of the twenty millions! The thought, and what it opened before him, dizzied him. He drank some of the diluted whisky in the glass beside him and sat on motionless. It was evident Mariposa did not know. She had been brought up in ignorance of the whole extraordinary story. The man and woman she had been taught to regard as her parents had committed an offense against the law, which they had hidden from her, secure in the thought that the other participants in the strange proceeding would never dare to confess. The minutes and hours ticked by and Essex still sat thinking, while the drunkard breathed stertorously in his heavy sleep, and the coals dropped softly in the grate as the fire sank into clinkers and ashes. CHAPTER XIII THE SEED OF BANQUO “What says the married woman?” --SHAKESPEARE. As soon as Mrs. Shackleton was sufficiently recovered, the family had moved from Menlo Park to their town house. The long work of settling up the great estate which had been left to the widow and her children, required their presence in the city, and the shock which Bessie had suffered in finding her husband dead, had rendered the country place unbearable to her.