"Hoped? Why--why, madam, you--then you knew?"
"All about it, of course! Oh, you needn't stare--it wasn't witchcraft,
it was this letter--read it." And taking a letter from her reticule,
she gave it to Barnabas, and watched him while he read:
TO HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF CAMBERHURST.
MADAM,--In justice to yourself I take occasion to
warn your Grace against the person calling himself Barnabas
Beverley. He is, in reality, an impudent impostor of
humble birth and mean extraction. His real name and
condition I will prove absolutely to your Grace at another
time.
Your Grace's most humble obedt.
WILFRED CHICHESTER.
"So you see I'm not a witch, sir,--oh no, I'm only an old woman, with,
among many other useful gifts, a very sharp eye for faces, a
remarkable genius for asking questions, and the feminine capacity
for adding two and two together and making them--eight. So, upon
reading this letter, I made inquiries on my own account with the
result that yesterday I drove over to a certain inn called the
'Coursing Hound,' and talked with your father. Very handsome he is
too--as he always was, and I saw him in the hey-day of his fame,
remember. Well, I sipped his ale,--very good ale I found it, and
while I sipped, we talked. He is very proud of his son, it seems,
and he even showed me a letter this son had written him from the
'George' inn at Southwark. Ha! Joan Beverley was to have married an
ugly old wretch of a marquis, and John Barty is handsome still. But
an inn-keeper, hum!"
"So--that was why my mother ran away, madam?"
"And Wilfred Chichester knows of this, and will tell Cleone, of
course!"
"I think not--at least not yet," answered Barnabas thoughtfully,--
"you see, he is using this knowledge as a weapon against me."
"Why?"
"I promised to help Ronald Barrymaine--"
"That wretched boy! Well?"
"And the only way to do so was to remove him from Chichester's
influence altogether. So I warned Mr. Chichester that unless he
forswore Barrymaine's society, I would, as Joan Beverley's son and
heir to the Beverley heritage, prove my claim and dispossess him."
"You actually threatened Wilfred Chichester with this, and forgot
that in finding you your mother's son, he would prove you to be your
father's also?"
"Yes, I--I only remembered my promise."
"The one you gave Cleone, which she had no right to exact--as I told
her--"