“Thalassa went back, across the moors, and I waited by the cross-roads till the wagonette came.  When I got back to the hotel I went up to my room and to bed.  I do not know what time it was next morning when my aunt came into my room, and told me that my father was dead.  She did not tell me much.  There had been a terrible accident, she said, and he had been found dead in his room.  I did not feel shocked, only ... indifferent.  I did not even wonder what had happened—­not then.  Afterwards I overheard one of the maids in the corridor telling another that it was suicide.

“That made no difference to me, except that I wanted more than ever to get away.  I formed my plans quickly, to go to London that day, but not by the express.  I knew my aunt would not go back that morning after what had happened, but I thought her husband might have to go on business.  And the express is always crowded.  I did not wish to be seen and brought back.  So I decided the slow midday train would be safest for me.  I waited for a time, and then I was able to slip away from the hotel without being noticed, while my aunt was out.  I got to London that night, feeling lonely and miserable.  I knew I had done right, but I could not help thinking ... of you.”

She ceased.  Charles Turold got up from his seat and took a turn round the room, then came back and stood looking down at her as she sat with her hand resting on the dark polished surface of the table.  His first words seemed to convey some inward doubt of the adequacy of the motive for disappearance which her story revealed.

“You should not have gone away like that, Sisily,” he said soberly.  “There was no reason, no real reason, I mean.  Where was the necessity, after what I told you?  Why should your father’s death have made you more anxious to go?  It seems to me that you had no reason then.”

She looked at him sadly in her first experience of masculine incomprehension of woman’s exaltation of sacrifice in love, but she did not speak.  He continued.  “But we must think of what’s to be done.”  He walked up and down the room again, considering this question with compressed brows.  He stopped, struck by a thought, and looked at her.  “The police have been trying to find out from Thalassa whether you went back to Flint House that night, but he will not tell them anything.  So they suspect him also.”

She roused at that.  “Oh, they must not!” she cried in distress.  “Poor Thalassa!  He must tell them the truth.”

“The question is—­what is the truth?” It flashed through his mind as he spoke that his interrogation was the echo of one put to him by his father before he left Cornwall.

“The truth is, that Thalassa and I left the house together that night before it happened.  Oh, cannot they believe that?  Cannot it be proved?”

“I could tell them when you left,” he said in a low tone.

“You!” she cried, looking at him with a kind of fear.  “How do you know?”