He took no notice of her warning, but resumed now with mock apology.  “But I’m afraid I’m mistaken in the identity.  Sorry to disappoint you, but the estate I allude to belongs to Miss Cameron, who lived near a locality called Turrifs Station.  Beg pardon, forgot for the moment your name was White, and that you know nothing about that interesting and historic spot.”

Perhaps because she had played the part of indifference so long, it seemed easiest to her, even in her present confusion of mind; at any rate she remained silent.

“Pity you weren’t her, isn’t it?” He showed all his white teeth.  He had been pale at first, but in talking the fine dark red took its wonted place in his cheeks.  He had tossed back his loose smoke-coloured hair with a nervous hand.  His dark beauty never showed to better advantage as he stood leaning back on the door.  “Pity you aren’t her, isn’t it?” he repeated, smilingly.

She had no statuesque pose, but she had assumed a look of insensibility almost equal to that of stone.

“Come to think of it, even if you were her, you’d find it hard to say so now; so, either way, I reckon you’ll have to do without the tin.  ’Twould be real awkward to say to all your respectable friends that you’d been sailing under false colours; that ‘White’ isn’t your bona fide cognomen; that you’d deserted a helpless old woman to come away; and as to how you left your home—­the sort of carriage you took to, my dear, and how you got over the waggoner to do the work of a sexton—­Oh, my, fine tale for Chellaston, that!  No, my dear young lady, take a fatherly word of admonition; your best plan is to make yourself easy without the tin.”

He looked at her, even now, with more curiosity than malice in his smiling face.  A power of complete reserve was so foreign to his own nature that without absolute proof he could not entirely believe it in her.  The words he was speaking might have been the utter nonsense to her that they would have been to any but the girl who was lost from the Bates and Cameron clearing for all hint she gave of understanding.  He worked on his supposition, however.  He had all the talking to himself.

“You’re mighty secret!  Now, look at me.  I’m no saint, and I’ve come here to make a clean breast of that fact.  When I was born, Uncle Sam said to me, ’Cyril P. Harkness, you’re a son of mine, and it’s your vocation to worship the God of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Almighty Dollar’; and I piped up, ‘Right you are, uncle.’  I was only a baby then.”  He added these last words reflectively, as if pondering on the reminiscence, and gained the object of his foolery—­that she spoke.

“If you mean to tell me that you’re fond of money, that’s no news.  I’ve had sense to see that.  If you thought I’d a mine belonging to me somewhere that accounts for the affection you’ve been talking of so much.  I begin to believe in it now.”