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"Never mind," I said. "It will be time well spent if it leads us any nearer to the truth."

"Yes?" she questioned, watching me anxiously, "you think so? I think so, too."

She became silent, sitting looking straight before her, the pupils of her blue eyes widely dilated. Then, at first in a queer, far-away voice, she began to speak again.

"I must tell you," she commenced "that before--my marriage, my name was Isabella de Valera."

I started.

"Ysola was my baby way of saying it, and so I came to be called Ysola. My father was manager of one of Senor Don Juan's estates, in a small island near the coast of Cuba. My mother"--she raised her little hands eloquently--"was half-caste. Do you know? And she and my father--"

She looked pleadingly at Val Beverley.

"I understand," whispered the latter with deep sympathy; "but you don't think it makes any difference, do you?"

"No?" said Mrs. Camber with a quaint little gesture. "To you, perhaps not, but there, where I was born, oh! so much. Well, then, my mother died when I was very little. Ah Tsong was her servant. There are many Chinese in the West Indies, you see, and I can just remember he carried me in to see her. Of course I didn't understand. My father quarrelled bitterly with the priests because they would not bury her in holy ground. I think he no longer believed afterward. I loved him very much. He was good to me; and I was a queen in that little island. All the negroes loved me, because of my mother, I think, who was partly descended from slaves, as they were. But I had not begun to understand how hard it was all going to be when my father sent me to a convent in Cuba.

"I hated to go, but while I was there I learned all about myself. I knew that I was outcast. It was"--she raised her hand--"not possible to stay. I was only fifteen when I came home, but all the same I was a woman. I was no more a child, and happy no longer. After a while, perhaps, when I forgot what I had suffered at the convent, I became less miserable. My father did all in his power to make me happy, and I was glad the work-people loved me. But I was very lonely. Ah Tsong understood."

Her eyes filled with tears.

"Can you imagine," she asked, "that when my father was away in distant parts of the island at night, Ah Tsong slept outside my door? Some of them say, 'Do not trust the Chinese' I say, except my husband and my father, I have never known another one to trust but Ah Tsong. Now they have taken him away from me."

Tears glittered on her lashes, but she brushed them aside angrily, and continued:

"I was still less than twenty, and looked, they told me, only fourteen, when Senor Menendez came to inspect his estate. I had never seen him before. There had been a rising in the island, in the year after I was born, and he had only just escaped with his life. He was hated. People called him Devil Menendez. Especially, no woman was safe from him, and in the old days, when his power had been great, he had used it for wickedness.

"My father was afraid when he heard he was coming. He would have sent me away, but before it could be arranged Senor the Colonel arrived. He had in his company a French lady. I thought her very beautiful and elegant. It was Madame de Staemer. It is only four years ago, a little more, but her hair was dark brown. She was splendidly dressed and such a wonderful horsewoman. The first time I saw her I felt as they had made me feel at the convent. I wanted to hide from her. She was so grand a lady, and I came from slaves."

She paused hesitatingly and stared down at her own tiny feet.

"Pardon me interrupting you, Mrs. Camber," I said, "but can you tell me in what way these two are related?"

She looked up with her naive smile.

"I can tell you, yes. A cousin of Senor Menendez married a sister of Madame de Staemer."

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, "a very remote kinship."

"It was in this way they met, in Paris, I think, and"--she raised her hands expressively--"she came with him to the West Indies, although it was during the great war. I think she loved him