"Well, then, have you brought the certificates?" she asked keenly.
"Which? You ask that? Surely, surely, you know that a certificate of marriage and one of birth were found in the flat by a Miss L'Estrange?"
"But am I in a dream? I have made sure that it was upon some knowledge of them that you relied when you wrote in the unsigned note, 'It is now a pretty certain thing that your sister was a duly wedded wife.'" And she looked at David's letter again.
"No, I had other grounds. I needn't tell you what, since they are not yet certain--other grounds. I have not heard yet of any certificates--"
"Well, God help me, then!" she murmured, half-crying. "What, then, does Mr. Harcourt mean? He says in the note of this morning: 'Mr. Harcourt has not been able to secure the certificates, but believes that Miss Mordaunt's fiancé, Mr. Van Hupfeldt, may be in a position to give her some information on the subject.' What does that mean when you never even heard of the certificates?"
Van Hupfeldt, looking squarely now at her, said: "It means nothing at all. You may take it from me that no certificates have been found."
Violet flushed angrily. "Some one is untrue!" she cried out.
"I fear that that is so," murmured Van Hupfeldt, dropping his eyes from her crimsoned face.
"With what object did this Harcourt come to you yesterday, Violet?" asked Van Hupfeldt.
"He wished to obtain my mother's authorization for him to spend one hundred pounds in buying the certificates from Miss L'Estrange's servant."
"Ah, that was what he said was his object. But his real object was slightly different, I'm afraid. I know this man, you see. He is poor, and not honest."
"But what is it to you? Why do you care? Why are you pale? Yes, I say it again, not honest! the miserable ruffian."
"If he heard you, I think he might resent it with some vigor," she said quietly.
"Why do you speak so strangely? What is it? Do you doubt what I tell you?" asked Van Hupfeldt.
"I neither doubt nor believe. What is it to me? I only feel ashamed to live in the same world with such people. If it was not to obtain my authorization to spend the one hundred pounds for the certificates, why did he come?"
"There were no certificates!" cried Van Hupfeldt, vehemently. "The certificates were an invention. What he really wanted was, not your authorization, but the one hundred itself. He hoped that when he asked for your authorization, you, in your eagerness to have the certificates, would produce the one hundred pounds, which to a man in his position is quite a large sum, whereupon he would have decamped, and you would have heard no more either of him or of your one hundred pounds. But, as you did not hand him the money, he now very naturally writes to say that he can't get the certificates. I know the fellow very well. I have long known him. He comes from America, where he has played such ingenious pranks once too often."