“I must be frank, very frank,” he said.

“Yes, Jack, or why speak at all?”

“From the night of my arrival in Little Rivers, when the Doge at once recognized who I was without telling me, I saw that, under his politeness and his kindness, he was hostile to my presence in Little Rivers.”

“Yes, I think that in a way he was,” she answered.

“I was conscious that something out of the past was between him and me, and that it included you in a subtle influence that nothing could change.  And this afternoon, while you were at the house and my father came to the drawing-room door, I could not help noticing how the Doge was overcome.  You noticed it, too?”

“Yes, I never saw my father in such anger before.  It seemed to me that he could have struck down that man in the doorway!” There was a perceptible shudder, but she did not look up, her glance remaining level with the flags.

“And on the pass you said, ‘It’s not in the blood!’” he continued.  “Yes, almost in terror you said it, as if it spelled an impassable gulf between us.  Why? why?  Mary, haven’t I a right to know?”

As he broke off passionately with this appeal, which was as the focus of all the fears that had tormented him, they were immediately under the light of a street lamp.  She turned her head toward him resolutely, in the mustering of her forces for an ordeal.  Her face was pale, but there was an effort at the old smile of comradeship.

“Yes, as I said, the little light that I have is yours, Jack,” she began.  “But there is not much.  It is, perhaps, more what I feel than what I know that has influenced me.  All that my father has ever said about you and your father and your relations to us was the night after I returned from the pass ahead of you, when you had descended into the canyon to frighten me with the risk you were taking.”

“I did not mean to frighten you!” he interjected.  “I only followed an impulse.”

“Yes, one of your impulses, Jack,” she remarked, comprehendingly.  “Father and I have been so much together—­indeed, we have never been apart—­that there is more than filial sympathy of feeling between us.  There is something akin to telepathy.  We often divine each other’s thoughts.  I think that he understood what had taken place between us on the pass; that you had brought on some sort of a crisis in our relations.  It was then that he told me who you were, as you know.  Then he talked of you and your father—­you still wish to hear?”

“Yes!”

“And you will listen in silence?”

“Yes!”

“I will grant your defence of your father, but you will not argue?  I am giving what you ask, in justice to myself; I am giving my reasons, my feelings.”

“No, I will not argue.”

Their tones were so low that a passer-by would have hardly been conscious that they were talking; but had the passer-by caught the pitch he might have hazarded many guesses, every one serious.