"Ah!" said Penrose, "I have heard rumours."
"It is a matter I can hardly speak of calmly," he said at last. "The night after that first scene between them, the night of her fall--her pretended fall, so Roger told me--he went downstairs in his excitement and misery, and drank, one way and another, nearly a bottle of brandy, a thing he had never done in his life before. But----"
French raised his shoulders sadly, then added, with some emphasis. "Don't, however, suppose the thing worse than it is. Give him a gleam of hope and happiness, and he would soon shake it off."
"Nothing--so far. I believe he has ceased to take any interest in it. Another line of action altogether was suggested to him. About three months ago he made an attempt to kidnap the child, and was foiled. He got word that she had been taken to Charlestown, and he went there with a couple of private detectives. But Mrs. Barnes was on the alert, and when he discovered the villa in which the child had been living, she had been removed. It was a bitter shock and disappointment, and when he got back to New York in November, in the middle of an epidemic, he was struck down by influenza and pneumonia. It went pretty hard with him. You will be shocked by his appearance. Ecco! was there ever such a story! Do you remember, Penrose, what a magnificent creature he was that year he played for Oxford, and you and I watched his innings from the pavilion?"
There was a note of emotion in the tone which implied much. Penrose assented heartily, remarking, however, that it was a magnificence which seemed to have cost him dear, if, as no doubt was the case, it had won him his wife.
"But now, with regard to money; you say he wants money. But surely, at the time of the marriage, something was settled on him?"
"Certainly, a good deal. But from the moment she left him, and the Heston bills were paid, he has never touched a farthing of it, and never will."
"So that the General's death was opportune? Well, it's a deplorable affair! And I wish I saw any chance of being of use."
"Because you know," the speaker reluctantly continued, "there's nothing to be done. The thing's finished."
"Finished?" French's manner took fire. "And the law can do _nothing_! Society can do _nothing_, to help that man either to right himself, or to recover his child? Ah!"--he paused to listen--"here he is!"