name was not her name.

"Do you mean to say that you made a young lady known to me under a false
name?" I asked, with the amused feeling that the days of wonders and
portents had not passed away yet. That the eminently serious Fynes
should do such an exceptional thing was simply staggering. With a more
hasty enunciation than usual little Fyne was sure that I would not demand
an apology for this irregularity if I knew what her real name was. A
sort of warmth crept into his deep tone.

"We have tried to befriend that girl in every way. She is the daughter
and only child of de Barral."

Evidently he expected to produce a sensation; he kept his eyes fixed upon
me prepared for some sign of it. But I merely returned his intense,
awaiting gaze. For a time we stared at each other. Conscious of being
reprehensibly dense I groped in the darkness of my mind: De Barral, De
Barral--and all at once noise and light burst on me as if a window of my
memory had been suddenly flung open on a street in the City. De Barral!
But could it be the same? Surely not!

"The financier?" I suggested half incredulous.

"Yes," said Fyne; and in this instance his native solemnity of tone
seemed to be strangely appropriate. "The convict."

Marlow looked at me, significantly, and remarked in an explanatory tone:

"One somehow never thought of de Barral as having any children, or any
other home than the offices of the "Orb"; or any other existence,