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“Pretty low, isn’t it? But there was something better than that. It seems that this is the blackguard that old Lord Trent’s elder daughter eloped with, years ago, and he had a son—she died fairly soon, poor woman, and I expect it was a happy release—What is it?”

Tony was looking at him with flattering intensity; his eyes were alight with a queer expression.

“Nothing; I’m only interested. I’m—trying to follow a relationship———”

“Oh, yes, you know the Trents. Or rather, the Trent—there’s only one! They run to small families. It goes in the female line, in default of male heirs, or there’d be none at all. This was Pamela Trent’s aunt. Well, as I say, there was a son, and this Ste. Croix freak says he was an unpleasant little beast and much in the way. Took after his father, perhaps. And Ste. Croix couldn’t touch any of the Trent money, so, to cut a long story short, he simply turned the boy adrift!”

He watched for the effect of his climax, but Tony’s face did not change.

“Don’t you understand? Cut him off—he was ten, I think the brute said—and left him without a friend in the world, to get on as best he might. He had deposited the birth certificate and one or two things like that with the Trents’ lawyers in London, so that, as he delicately said, ‘if the boy should arrive from the gutter some day, they should be sure of their Lord Trent, one of whom to be proud.’ And, upon my honour, he didn’t seem to care two straws if the boy were alive or dead. I don’t wonder you find it hard to believe———”

“I can believe it all right,” said Tony. He touched the roof of his mouth with his tongue; “But why in God’s name was he giving himself away like that?”

“Oh, devilment, and even more absinthe than usual.