Day after day he toured the curiosity shops of Madrid, delving into dusty cellars and examining everything, picture, paper, or curio, which bore the stamp of age. Only Beavis would have devoted so much time to a single detail when practically his case was ready, but his perseverance was rewarded when he came upon two ancient miniatures which were strikingly like Dolores. They represented two Spanish ladies who had existed a hundred years earlier, and they might have been mother and daughter, judging by their resemblance to one another, but they interested the impostor for the reason that their features were exact replicas of Dolores'.
From the moment they became Beavis' by purchase he called them miniatures of two of Dolores' ancestors, and he exhibited them as her great-great-grandmother and a remote aunt. They were Peraltas, and bore the Peralta cast of countenance--at least Beavis said so, and he professed to be the only living authority on a famous Spanish family which had come upon evil days.
Every week he heard from Dolores, and it ought to have been obvious to him that the girl was thinking less of the twenty millions than she was of her "gallant knight errant." She was really more concerned with his welfare than with the prospect of becoming the richest woman in the world. Beavis smiled as he read her somewhat artless compositions. It was the money he was after, and he was too clever an adventurer and impostor to have any time for love-making, although Dolores was undoubtedly a beauty.
Thanks to the financial help of "The Silver King," Beavis was able to do his work thoroughly in Spain before returning to the United States, and when he arrived in New York he brought with him a pile of documents bearing on the Peralta family. The two miniatures occupied a prominent place, and the forged deed of gift, so skilfully executed that Beavis confidently handed it over to experts for examination, was also to the fore. Those who had heard of Beavis' activities were greatly excited, for it is not often that a claimant comes forward to an estate worth in American money one hundred million dollars.
But before he came into Court on behalf of Dolores there was one important thing to be done. Beavis had devoted years of labour to the task. He was going to risk a year's imprisonment, and he considered it only right that, to make assurance doubly sure as far as his reward was concerned, Dolores should become his wife.