The more Captain Verinder turned over in his mind the chief points of the story told him by his niece, the more convinced he became that it was indeed, as he had remarked to himself at the time, a matter worth inquiring into.

The Captain, when once he had made up his mind to any particular course of action, was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet. His first proceeding was to seek out a certain billiard-room acquaintance of the name of Tring--a man who had got through two fortunes in his time and was now reduced to earning a scanty livelihood by literary hackwork at the British Museum. Having given him the particulars of the information he required, the Captain met him by appointment a couple of days later.

"The only person I can find," said Tring, "of the name specified by you that seems likely to answer to your requirements, is a certain Sir Gilbert Clare, of Withington Chase, Hertfordshire, the representative of one of the oldest titles in the kingdom."

Captain Verinder, having taken a note of the name and address in his pocket-book and paid the other for his trouble, went his way. His next step, the following morning, was to call on Giovanna with a request for the loan of ten pounds.

"\'Tis not for myself I ask it," he said with one of the grandiloquent airs in which he sometimes indulged. "It will be expended to the last farthing in your service, my dear. I refrain from saying more at present, save that in the course of a few days I hope to be the bearer of news that will--well, that will astonish you very considerably."

Vanna raised no objection to lending her uncle the amount he asked for, although by this time she had seen enough of him to feel pretty sure that she would never see a shilling of it back.

In the course of the following day Captain Verinder booked himself by train to Mapleford, which station he had ascertained to be the nearest to the point he was bound for. His object was to try to discover whether the John Alexander Clare whom his niece had married so many years before was in any way related to, or connected with, Sir Gilbert Clare of Withington Chase.

The Captain having located himself at the best hotel, and partaken of a dinner such as had been altogether beyond his means for a long time past, proceeded to take a quiet stroll about the little town, which, however, had nothing of interest to offer for his inspection. Later on he found his way into the coffee-room of the hotel, which place, as he had expected it would, drew to itself in the course of the evening a round dozen or more of the better class of tradespeople and others, all of whom, it was evident, were in the habit of frequently meeting there. Here he found no difficulty in ascertaining everything about Sir Gilbert that it concerned him to know. Thus, he learnt that Sir Gilbert\'s son by his first marriage had left England, after a quarrel with his father, more than twenty years before, and that, a few years later, news had come to hand that he had lost his life through some accident abroad, only, nobody seemed to know either the nature of the accident in question, or where it had happened. Further, the Captain learnt that the second Lady Clare and her three sons were all dead, and that Sir Gilbert, a broken, childless old man of seventy-four, was living at the Chase in a seclusion that was rarely broken by any visitor from the outside world.

It was on a Friday that the Captain went down to Mapleford, and the following Monday saw him back in town. He had stayed in the country over Sunday in order that he might be present at morning service at the church, just beyond the precincts of the Chase, which Sir Gilbert made a point of attending, and where several generations of his progenitors were buried.

The Captain wanted to see for himself what kind of man Sir Gilbert was. The latter arrived in due course, alone and on foot, and from the place where he sat Verinder had an unimpeded view of him. When service was over the Captain took a stroll round the church, pausing to look at every monument and to read every inscription commemorative of dead and gone members of the Clare family. One inscription, and one only, had any special interest for him. It was that which recorded the death of "John Alexander Clare, eldest son of Sir Gilbert Clare, who was accidentally killed abroad" on such and such a date. "I would wager a hundred pound note to a fiver--if I had one," said the Captain with emphasis, "that this tablet refers to Vanna\'s husband and to no one else. It\'s altogether out of the question that there should have been two John Alexander Clares living at the same time. And to think that the young man has been dead for seventeen years and that his widow has known nothing about it? What a fortunate thing it is for her that she has got a man of the world like me at her back! From this day forward her interests and mine are identical."

A jubilant man was Captain Verinder when he went back to London next day.

About midday on Tuesday he called on Giovanna at the boarding-house--one largely frequented by foreigners--at which she had located herself for the time being. That the news of which he was the bearer was a great surprise to her hardly needs to be stated. It was both a surprise and a shock, for although she had never really cared for Alec as a wife should care for her husband, and had left him of her own accord and under most cruel circumstances, through all the years which had intervened since then his image had been often in her thoughts, but it was as a man still living and in the prime of life that he had dwelt in her memory. Consequently, to be told suddenly that he had met with a violent death seventeen years before, which pointed to a time almost immediately after her desertion of him, was enough to thrill her through every fibre of her being.

Well, whatever uncertainty she might heretofore have felt with regard to her husband\'s fate had no longer any room for existence. She had been a widow all these years without knowing it.

Before long the Captain went on to speak of Sir Gilbert, and to detail all that he had heard in reference to him. He had always been rather clever as an amateur sketcher, and could catch a likeness better than most people, and he now took pencil and paper and with a few bold strokes drew an outline portrait of the baronet. Pushing it across the table to Vanna, he said: "Does that in any way resemble the English milor who travelled all the way to Catanzaro to see the Mr. John Alexander who became your husband a little later?"

"Yes, that is the man," said Vanna quietly when she had examined the sketch.

"Ah; I thought as much," remarked her uncle drily.

"And now that you have found out all this about Sir Gilbert Clare, in what way does it, or can it, affect me?" queried Vanna presently.

The Captain regarded her with a pitying smile, as he might a child who had asked him some utterly preposterous question.

"Cannot you see that the fact of your father-in-law being a rich and childless man may be made--I say made--to affect your fortunes very materially--very materially indeed? That is," he added a moment after, "if you only know how to put the knowledge thus acquired to a practical use."

Giovanna shook her head. It was evident that she could not in the least comprehend what her uncle was driving at.

The Captain\'s shoulders went up nearly to his ears. "What a very fortunate thing it is, my dear, that at such an important crisis of your life you have by your side a thorough man of the world like myself--and one so completely devoted to your interests! Were you my own child I could not entertain a greater regard and affection for you than ............