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She clutched convulsively at the arms of her chair.

"He told me!" she said in a very low voice.

Then, looking up pitifully:

"Do you know?" she asked in her quaint way. "It was a mock marriage. He had done it and thought no shame, because it was so with my mother. Oh!"

Her beautiful eyes flashed, and for the first time since I had met Ysola Camber I saw the real Spanish spirit of the woman leap to life.

"He did not know me. Perhaps I did not know myself. That night, with no money, without a ring, a piece of lace, a peseta, anything that had belonged to him, I went with Ah Tsong. We made our way to a half-sister of my father's who lived in Puerto Principe, and at first--she would not have me. I was talked about, she said, in all the islands. She told me of my poor father. She told me I had dragged the name of de Valera in the dirt. At last I made her understand--that what everyone else had known, I had never even dreamed of."

She looked up wistfully, as if thinking that we might doubt her.

"Do you know?" she whispered.

"I know--oh! I know!" said Val Beverley. I loved her for the sympathy in her voice and in her eyes. "It is very, very brave of you to tell us this, Mrs. Camber."

"Yes? Do you think so?" asked the girl, simply. "What does it matter if it can help Colin?

"This aunt of mine," she presently continued, "was a poor woman, and it was while I was hiding in her house--because spies of Senor Menendez were searching for me--that I met--my husband. He was studying in Cuba the strange things he writes about, you see. And before I knew what had happened--I found I loved him more than all else in the world. It is so wonderful, that feeling," she said, looking across at Val Beverley. "Do you know?"

The girl flushed deeply, and lowered her eyes, but made no reply.

"Because you are a woman, too, you will perhaps understand," she resumed. "I did not tell him. I did not dare to tell him at first. I was so madly happy I had no courage to speak. But when"--her voice sank lower and lower--"he asked me to marry him, I told him. Nothing he could ever do would change my love for him now, because he forgave me and made me his wife."

I feared that at last she was going to break down, for her voice became very tremulous and tears leapt again into her eyes. She conquered her emotion, however, and went on:

"We crossed over to the States, and Colin's family who had heard of his marriage--some friend of Senor Menendez had told them--would not know us. It meant that Colin, who would have been a rich man, was very poor. It made no difference. He was splendid. And I was so happy it was all like a dream. He made me forget I was to blame for his troubles. Then we were in Washington--and I saw Senor Menendez in the hotel!

"Oh, my heart stopped beating. For me it seemed like the end of everything. I knew, I knew, he was following me. But he had not seen me, and without telling Colin the reason, I made him leave Washington, He was glad to go. Wherever we went, in America, they seemed to find out about my mother. I got to hate them, hate them all. We came to England, and Colin heard about this house, and we took it.

"At last we were really happy. No one knew us. Because we were strange, and because of Ah Tsong, they looked at us very funny and kept away, but we did not care. Then Sir James Appleton sold Cray's Folly."

She looked up quickly.

"How can I tell you? It must have been by Ah Tsong that he traced me to Surrey. Some spy had told him there was a Chinaman living here. Oh, I don't know how he found out, but when I heard who was coming to Cray's Folly I thought I should die.

"Something I must tell you now. When I had told my story to Colin, one thing I had not told him, because I was afraid what he might do. I had not told him the name of the man who had caused me to suffer so much. On the day I first saw Senor Menendez walking in the garden of Cray's Folly I knew I must tell my husband what he had so often asked me to tell him--the name of the man. I told him--and