“I understand,” he muttered in a dull voice.

“I thought it all out on the way to the hotel with my aunt.  I determined to go back and see my father that night.  I felt that I could not sleep until I knew the whole truth.  I left the dinner table as soon as I could, and hurried down to the station to catch the half-past seven wagonette to St. Fair.

“I got out of the wagonette at the cross-roads, and walked over the moors.  When I reached Flint House I knocked at the door, and Thalassa let me in.  I told him I wanted to see my father, and he said he would wait downstairs and take me back across the moors when I came down.

“I ran upstairs and knocked at the door of my father’s study.  He did not reply, so I opened the door and went in.  He was sitting at his table writing, and when he looked up and saw me he was very angry.  ’You, Sisily!’ he said—­’what has brought you here at this hour?’ I told him I had come to hear the truth from his own lips.  I asked him to tell me everything.  He gave me one of his black looks, but it did not frighten me—­nothing would have frightened me then.  He seemed to consider for a moment, and then said that perhaps, after all, it would be better if he told me himself.

“So he told me—­told me in half-a-dozen sentences which seemed to burn into my brain.  I sat still for a while, almost stunned, I think; then, as the full force of what he had told me came home to my mind, I did something I had never done before.  I pleaded with my father—­not for my own sake, but for my mother’s.  I told him I would go anywhere, do anything, if he would only keep her secret safe.  I might as well have pleaded with the rocks.  He sat there with a stern face until I went down on my knees to him and begged him to think about it—­to keep it secret for a little while at least.  He grew angry, very angry, at that.  I remember—­I shall never be able to forget—­his reply.  ‘A little while?’ he said, ’and the claim for the title is to be heard next week.  I’m to postpone my claim for the sake of your mother, a ——­’”

Sisily broke off suddenly, her white face flaming scarlet, her eyes widely distended, as though that last terrible scene was again produced before her vision.  Charles Turold watched her mutely, with the understanding that nothing he could say would bring comfort to her stricken soul.

She continued after a pause—­

“I left him then.  I knew that I should never be able to speak to him again.  Downstairs, Thalassa was waiting for me.  He had a letter in his hand.  He looked at me, but did not speak, just opened the door, and we went out across the moors.  We went silently.  Thalassa was always kind to me, and I think that somehow he understood.  It was not until we were nearing the cross-roads that I turned to him and said quickly, ’Thalassa, you must not tell anybody that I saw my father tonight.’  I wanted to keep it secret, I wanted nobody to know—­never.  I knew my father would not talk, it was not of sufficient consequence to him.  He thought of nothing but the title.  Thalassa promised that he wouldn’t.  ’Nobody will ever find out from me, Miss Sisily,’ he said.