"What made you think they might be counterfeit?"
"What made me think so? Seeing that I discovered with them a number of
implements, etc, used apparently in the manufacture of base coin, my
inference naturally was that the coins must have been false."
Still she looked at me. Gradually her expression hardened.
"Dick," she said at last, "you are deceiving me. You have deceived me
all along. You told me you knew my father's secret. Now you don't know
it--do you?"
"Indeed you are mistaken, quite mistaken, dearest," I exclaimed quickly.
"I know it well enough, but I don't, I admit, know that part of it
which bears upon these coins. I never pretended to know that part."
It was a wild shot, but I felt I must say something in my defence.
I hated deceiving Vera in this way, as, indeed, I should have hated to
deceive her in any way, but, playing a part still, I was driven to
subterfuge. After all, I had never said I knew her father's secret.
She had jumped to the conclusion that I knew it, that day I had found
her locked in the upper room in the house in Belgrave Street, and I had
not disillusioned her. That was all.
The door of the sitting-room opened at that moment, we sprang apart as
Faulkner and Violet entered. The pretty girl, in a blue serge coat and
skirt, looked radiantly happy, and the happiness she felt seemed to
increase her great beauty. I confess I had not before fully realised
what a lovely girl she was.
"Ah, Dick, my dear fellow," Faulkner exclaimed, grasping me by the hand,
"I want you to congratulate me, old chap."
"Oh, I do, of course," I said at once. "I congratulate you doubly--on
becoming engaged, and on breaking off your engagement."
He made a quick little gesture of impatience.
"Oh, I don't mean congratulations of that kind," he said quickly. "I
shouldn't ask you to waste your time in congratulating me upon anything
so commonplace as an engagement of marriage. I want you to congratulate
me upon something you don't yet know."
"Well, what is it?" I said impatiently. "Have you come into a
fortune?"
"Right the very first time!" he exclaimed. "Yes, I have. I've
inherited, quite unexpectedly, a very large fortune. But the odd thing
is this. My benefactor is, or rather was, unknown to me. Until
yesterday I had never even heard his name."
"How wonderful! But how splendid!" I cried out. "Do tell me more
about it. Tell me everything."
"I will. And now prepare to receive a shock. The will leaving me this
fortune was found in the safe discovered among the debris of Chateau
d'Uzerche, after the fire?"