had related to her, but she told of his search for his own people; of his experience with the Adleys in London; of the apparent attempt of her own father to communicate with him or with her through him; and she showed Bennet her letter received here on Scott Street.
During the first half of the hour, Bennet, of course, called her crazy over and over again; then—very like indeed to his grandfather—he became, not less contemptuous, but more interested. He cross-questioned, he tried to make Ethel contradict herself; he examined the envelope and postmark of Ethel's letter from Huston Adley; he again pronounced the entire affair a lunatic's hoax and then determined to accompany his cousin and Barney to the sitting with Mrs. Davol that night.
So he stayed to dinner; and when Barney returned, Bennet knew almost everything which Ethel did, except the fact that their cousin Agnes had had three prints of a group photograph which portrayed Barney Loutrelle and the additional amazing fact, which had come to Ethel's own consciousness only during the process of Bennet's cross-questioning of her. This fact was that the great, old room in the new house on Resurrection Rock had been, once, the salon in the ancient wing of the château of Chenontresor, which for four hundred years had been in the family of Hilaire de Chenal whom her aunt Cecilia had married.
The recollection of that ancient room, visited by Ethel when she was a child, had come to her with the indubitable clearness with which, in moments of intensity, remembrances may return; and in connection with it, she now was aware that several years ago her uncle Hilaire, having gambled too recklessly and hav-
