"Yes. Mr. Guyse. I saw him come," she replied as naturally as she could.
"Yes. H’m! You and he have seen a good deal of each other?"
"We have. It was winter, and the Pele is not at all a large house."
"How did he strike you, I wonder? But perhaps such a question is merely futile. We must come to the main point—the surprising, I may say the extraordinary information which this young man has just given me. My dear, you must prepare yourself for—for something in the nature of a shock."
"Oh, Grandfather, please, please tell me! Is it abou—about Mr. Guyse?"
"Well, in part—in part it is. Very painful, very distressing, of course ... but in the main it concerns you, my dear, you and your father, my poor son-in-law, Madoc Innes."
She sat like a stone. "My father!" she whispered. "He—he is worse. Ah, don’t say he is—dead?"
The vicar bowed his head. His hands were playing with a cablegram which lay upon the table before him.
"He is dead," he said. "This message arrived for you after you had left the Pele yesterday morning. Mr. Guyse brought it to me, because he feared, in the state of your health, he ought not to give it to you under the circumstances. He thought you should be safe at home when the news was broken. Er—your aunt forwarded you a letter from New York, which she thought was from your father, some days ago?"
She found her voice with a sob. "Yes! He said he was coming—sailing in the _Stupendous_. I was to go to Liverpool to meet him. That was partly why I hurried home. Oh, don’t say he is dead; don’t say I shall never see him!"
"My dear, you must calm yourself sufficiently to allow me to proceed. The most surprising part of the story is still to be told. I have seldom been so completely taken aback as by the news Mr. Guyse has just given me."
"Mr. Guyse! What does he know about father?"
"Ah, my dear, that is the point. That—is—the point. He did not know poor Madoc himself, but it seems that his twin brother knew him very well indeed."
"Wolf!" cried the girl bewildered. "Wolf knew my father!"
"Intimately. They were in Alaska together. They went to Klondyke together. Your father had the most astonishing good fortune. He struck an oil well when he was looking for gold. It was in the very place where it was most wanted. He managed to keep it quiet until he had bought up all the land he required, and then turned it into a company. He died—your father died—a millionaire, my dear."