“Why not?” she demanded.

“Because,” he answered, with a drawling sneer, “you are like the rest of creation.  You put breed before everything.  Unless a man has what you are pleased to term pure blood in his veins he is beyond the pale.”

“Whatever are you talking about?” said Dot, frankly mystified.

He stopped dead and faced her.  “I am talking of myself, if you want to know,” he told her very bitterly.  “I am beyond the pale, an illegitimate son, with a strain of Red Indian in my veins to complete my damnation.”

“Good gracious!” said Dot.

She stared at him for a few seconds mutely, as if the sudden announcement had taken her breath away.

At last:  “Then—­then—­Mrs. Errol—­” she stammered.

“Is not my mother,” he informed her grimly.  “Did you ever seriously think she was?” He flung back his shoulders arrogantly.  “You’re almighty blind, you English.”

Dot continued to contemplate him with her frank eyes, as if viewing for the first time a specimen of some rarity.

“Well, I don’t see that it makes any difference,” she said at length.  “You are you just the same.  I—­I really don’t see quite why you told me.”

“No?” said Nap, staring back at her with eyes that told her nothing.  “P’r’aps I just wanted to show you that you are wasting your solicitude on an object of no value.”

“How—­funny of you!” said Dot.

She paused a moment, still looking at him; then with a quick, childish movement she slipped her hand through his arm.  Quite suddenly she knew how to deal with him.

“You seem to forget,” she said with a little smile, “that I’m going to be your sister one day.”

He stiffened at her action, and for a single moment she wondered if she could have made a mistake.  And then as suddenly he relaxed.  He took the hand that rested on his arm and squeezed it hard.

And Dot knew that in some fashion, by a means which she scarcely understood, she had gained a victory.

They went on together along the mossy, winding path.  A fleeting shower was falling, and the patter of it sounded on the leaves.

Nap walked with his face turned up to the raindrops, sure-footed, with the gait of a panther.  He did not speak a word to the girl beside him, but his silence, did not disconcert her.  There was even something in it that reassured her.

They were approaching the farther end of the wood when he abruptly spoke.

“So you think it makes no difference?”

Was there a touch of pathos in the question?  She could not have said.  But she answered it swiftly, with all the confidence—­and ignorance—­of youth.

“Of course I do!  How could it make a difference?  Do you suppose—­if it had been Bertie—­I should have cared?”

“Bertie!” he said.  “Bertie is a law-abiding citizen.  And you—­pardon me for saying so—­are young.”

“Oh, yes, I know,” she admitted.  “But I’ve got some sense all the same.  And—­and—­Nap, may I say something rather straight?”