From the very beginning she had encouraged me in the belief that she was a negress, never once arousing the faintest suspicion in my mind.

Not by the slip of the tongue, or the glance of an eye, had she permitted either of us to forget the barrier of race between.

Nothing then, I was convinced, short of death or disgrace, could ever compel her to confess the truth yet.

Kirby might suspect, might fear, but he had surely never learned who she was from her lips--that she was Eloise Beaucaire.
And was she?
Was the proof of her identity, as yet produced, the story of Elsie Clark, sufficiently satisfactory to my own mind?
It became more so as I thought, as I remembered.

Every link in the chain of evidence seemed to fall noiselessly into its place, now that I compared my own experience with the details furnished me by the mulatto girl.
No other conclusion appeared possible, or probable; no other solution fully met the facts in the case.