“So much the better for me,” he laughed.  “That’s how you came to be wandering on old Wayne’s terrace, just in the nick of time.  What stumps me is the promptness with which you thought of stowing me away.”

“It wasn’t promptness, exactly.  As a matter of fact, I had worked the whole thing out beforehand.”

His eyebrows went up incredulously.  “For me?”

“No, not for you; for anybody.  Ever since my guardian allowed me to build the studio—­last year—­I’ve imagined how easy it would be for some—­some hunted person to stay hidden here, almost indefinitely.  I’ve tried to fancy it, when I’ve had nothing better to do.”

“You don’t seem to have had anything better to do very often,” he observed, glancing about the cabin.

“If you mean that I haven’t painted much, that’s quite true.  I thought I couldn’t do without a studio—­till I got one.  But when I’ve come here, I’m afraid it’s generally been to—­to indulge in day-dreams.”

“Day-dreams of helping prisoners to escape.  It wouldn’t be every girl’s fancy, but it’s not for me to complain of that.”

“My father would have wanted me to do it,” she declared, as if in self-justification.  “A woman once helped him to get out of prison.”

“Good for her!  Who was she?”

Having asked the question lightly, in a boyish impulse to talk, he was surprised to see her show signs of embarrassment.

“She was my mother,” she said, after an interval in which she seemed to be making up her mind to give the information.

In the manifest difficulty she had in speaking, Ford sprang to her aid.

“That’s like the old story of Gilbert A Becket—­Thomas A Becket’s father, you know.”

The historical reference was received in silence, as she bent over the small task she had in hand.

“He married the woman who helped him out of prison,” Ford went on, for her enlightenment.

She raised her head and faced him.

“It wasn’t like the story of Gilbert A Becket,” she said, quietly.

It took some seconds of Ford’s slow thinking to puzzle out the meaning of this.  Even then he might have pondered in vain had it not been for the flush that gradually over-spread her features, and brought what he called the wild glint into her eyes.  When he understood, he reddened in his own turn, making matters worse.

“I beg your pardon,” he stammered.  “I never thought—­”

“You needn’t beg my pardon,” she interrupted, speaking with a catch in her breath.  “I wanted you to know....  You’ve asked me so many questions that it seemed as if I was ashamed of my father and mother when I didn’t answer....  I’m not ashamed of them....  I’d rather you knew....  Every one does—­who knows me.”

Half unconsciously he glanced up at the framed sketches on the chimney-piece.  Her eyes followed him, and she spoke instantly: 

“You’re quite right.  I meant that—­for them.”