After that quietly spoken fact that her mother was dead, David waited for Marge O'Doone to make some further explanation.

He had so firmly convinced himself that the picture he had carried was the key to all that he wanted to know--first from Tavish, if he had lived, and now from the girl--that it took him a moment or two to understand what he saw in his companion's face.

He realized then that his possession of the picture and the manner in which it had come into his keeping were matters of great perplexity to her, and that the woman whom he had met in the Transcontinental held no significance for her at all, although he had told her with rather marked emphasis that this woman--whom he had thought was her mother--had been searching for a man who bore her own name, O'Doone.

The girl was plainly expecting him to say something, and he reiterated this fact--that the woman in the coach was very anxious to find a man whose name was O'Doone, and that it was quite reasonable to suppose that _her_ name was O'Doone, especially as she had with her this picture of a girl bearing that name.

It seemed to him a powerful and utterly convincing argument.