"Oh please don"t answer me like that! Why won"t you tell me?"
He seemed to consider the point for a moment, and then he said:
"I am not at all sure that I am at liberty to tell you, Miss Farmond, without further consultation."
"Has Sir Reginald really any good reasons for not telling me?"
"Have you asked him that question?"
"No," she confessed. "He and Lady Cromarty have been so frightfully kind, and yet so--so reserved on that subject, that I have never liked to ask them direct. But they know that I have guessed, and they haven"t done anything to prevent me finding out more for myself, which means that they really are quite willing to let me find out if I can."
He shook his head.
"I am afraid I shall require more authority than that."
She pursed her lips and looked at the floor in silence, and then she rose.
"Well, if you absolutely refuse to tell me _anything_, Mr. Rattar, I suppose----"
A dejected little shrug completed her sentence, and as she turned towards the door her eloquent eyes looked at him for a moment beneath their long lashes with an expression in them that might have moved a statue. Although Simon Rattar had the reputation of being impervious to woman"s wiles, he may have been moved by this unspoken appeal. He certainly seemed struck by something, for even as her back was turning towards him, he said suddenly, and in a distinctly different voice:
"You say you can guess yourself?"
She nodded, and added with a pathetic coaxing note in her low voice:
"But I want to _know_!"
"Supposing," he suggested, "you were to tell me precisely how much you do know already, and then I could judge whether the rest might or might not be divulged."
Her face brightened and she returned to her chair with a prompt.i.tude that suggested she was not unaccustomed to win a lost battle with these weapons.
"Well," she said, "it was only six months ago--when mother died--that I first had the least suspicion there was any mystery about me--anything to hide. I knew she hadn"t always been happy and that her trouble had something to do with my father, simply because she hardly ever mentioned him. But she lived at Eastbourne just like plenty of other widows and we had a few friends, though never very many, and I was very happy at school, and so I never troubled much about things."
"And knew nothing up till six months ago?" asked Simon, who was following her story very attentively.
"Nothing at all. Then, about a month after mother"s death, I got a note from you asking me to go up to London and meet Sir Reginald Cromarty. I had never even heard of him before! Well, I went and he was simply as kind as--well, as he always is to everybody, and said he was a kind of connection of my family and asked me to pay them a long visit to Keldale."
"How long ago precisely was that?"
She looked a little surprised.
"Oh, you know exactly. Almost just four months ago, wasn"t it?"
He nodded, but said nothing, and she went on:
"From the very first it had seemed very strange that I had never heard a word about the Cromartys from mother, and as soon as I got to Keldale and met Lady Cromarty, I felt sure there was something wrong. I mean that I wasn"t an ordinary distant relation. For one thing they never spoke of our relationship and exactly what sort of cousins we were, and considering how keen Sir Reginald is on his pedigree and all his relations and everybody, that alone made me certain I wasn"t the ordinary kind. That was obvious, wasn"t it?"
"It seems so," the lawyer admitted cautiously.
"Of course it was! Well, one day I happened to be looking over an old photograph alb.u.m and suddenly I saw my father"s photograph! Mother had a miniature of him--I have it still, and I was certain it was the same man. I pulled myself together and asked Sir Reginald in a very ordinary voice who that was, and I could see that both he and Lady Cromarty jumped a little. He had to tell me it was his brother Alfred and I discovered he had long been dead, but I didn"t try to get any more information from them. I applied to Bisset."
She gave a little laugh and looked at him with a touch of defiance. His inscrutable countenance appeared to annoy her.
"Well?" he remarked.
"Perhaps you think I oughtn"t to have gone to a butler about such a thing, but Bisset is practically one of the family and I didn"t give him the least idea of what I was after. I simply drew him on the subject of the Cromarty family history and among other things--that didn"t so much interest me--I found that Mr. Alfred Cromarty was never married and seemed to have had rather a gay reputation."
She looked at him with an expression that would have immediately converted any susceptible man into a fellow conspirator, and asked in her most enticing voice:
"Need you ask what I guessed? What is the use in not telling me simply whether I have guessed right!"
Silent Simon"s face remained a mask.
"What precisely did you guess?"
"That my mother wasn"t married," she said, her voice falling very low, "and I am really Sir Reginald"s niece though he never can acknowledge it--and I don"t want him to! But I do want to be sure. Dear Mr. Rattar, won"t you tell me?"
Dear Mr. Rattar never relaxed a muscle.
"Your guess seems very probable," he admitted.
"But tell me definitely."
"Why?" he enquired coldly.
"Oh, have you no _curiosity_ yourself--especially about who your parents were; supposing you didn"t know?"
"Then it"s only out of curiosity that you enquired?"
"Only!" she repeated with a world of woman"s scorn. "But what sort of motives did you expect? I have walked in the whole way this morning just to end the suspense of wondering! Of course, I"ll never tell a soul you told me."
She threw on him a moving smile.
"You needn"t actually tell me outright. Just use some legal word--"Alibi" if I am right and "forgery" if I"m wrong!"
Silent Simon"s sudden glance chilled her smile. She evidently felt she had been taking the law in vain.
"I only meant----" she began anxiously.
"I must consult Sir Reginald," he interrupted brusquely.
She made no further effort. That glance seemed to have subdued her spirit.
"I am sorry I have bothered you," she said as she went.
As the door closed behind her, Mr. Rattar took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow and his neck. And then he fell to work again upon the recent records of the firm. Yet, absorbed though he seemed, whenever a door opened or shut sharply or a step sounded distinctly outside his room, he would look up quickly and listen, or that expression would come into his eye which both Mary MacLean and Mr. Ison had described as the look of one who was watched.