“I can guess,” I answered.

“Who is this girl, Blanche Moyat?”

“A farmer’s daughter,” I answered.  “It seems that I paid her too much or too little, attention, I am not sure which.  At any rate, she has an imaginary grievance against me, and this is the result.”

“She tells the truth?”

“I have not heard her story,” I answered, “but it is true that I encouraged her to suppress the fact that she bad seen the man in the village, and that he had asked for me.”

“What folly!”

“Perhaps,” I answered.  “You see, I thought that a verdict of ’found drowned’ would save trouble.”

“This accursed woman at the Grange is in it, I know,” Ray remarked, slowly filling his pipe.  “I wonder if she knew that I was about?  That would give her a zest for the job.”

“She knows that you were at Braster at the time,” I said.  “It was the night of your lecture.”

Ray began to blow out dense clouds of smoke.

“We’re safe,” he said thoughtfully, “both of us.  There’s just a link in the chain missing.”

“The police have been here with a warrant in search of that link,” I remarked.

“They’ll never find it, for it’s in my pocket,” he remarked grimly.

“Colonel Ray,” I said, suddenly nerving myself to risk his anger, “there is a question which I must ask you.”

I saw his lips come firmly together.  He neither encouraged nor checked me.

“Who was that man?”

“You are better ignorant.”

“Was it my father?”

If he did not answer my question, it at least seemed to suggest something to him.

“Has that woman been here?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“She believes that it was your father?”

“She does.”

He removed his pipe from his teeth and looked at it thoughtfully.

“Ah!” he said.

“You have not answered my question,” I reminded him.

“Nor am I going to,” he replied coolly.  “You know already as much as is good for you.”

He rose and threw open the door of my cottage.  For several moments he stood bareheaded, looking up towards the house, looking and listening.  He glanced at his watch, and walked several times backwards and forwards from the edge of the cliff to my door.  Then he came in for his hat and stick.

“I am going down to the sea,” he said.  “If Lady Angela comes, will you call me?  I shall not be out of hearing.”

“You are expecting her?” I asked, looking down at my work.

“Yes.  It was necessary for me to see her somewhere, so I asked her to come here.  Perhaps the Duke has found out and stopped her.  Anyhow, call me if she comes.”

He stepped outside, and I heard him scrambling down the cliff.  I set my teeth and turned to my work.  It was a hard thing to have my little room, with its store of memories, turned into a meeting-place for these two.  I at least would take care to be far enough away.  And then I began wondering whether she would come.  I was still wondering when I heard her footsteps.