“Follow me,” was the quiet reply.  “There is a room on this very floor where we can talk undisturbed.”

Mr. Hazen cast a quick glance behind him at the man who had driven up with him and whom nobody had noticed till now.  Then without a word he separated himself from the chattering group encircling him and stepped after Mr. Ransom into the small room where the latter had held his first memorable conversation with the lawyer.

“Now,” said he as the door swung to behind them, “plain language and not too much of it.  I have no time to waste, but the truth about Georgian I must know.”

Ransom settled himself.  He felt bound to comply with the other’s request, but he wished to make sure of not saying too much, or too little.  Hazen’s attack had startled him.  It revealed one of two things.  Either this man of mystery had assumed the offensive to hide his own connection with this tragedy, or his antagonism was an honest one, springing from an utter disbelief in the circumstances reported to him by the press and such gossips as he had encountered on his way to Sitford.

With the first possibility he felt himself unable to cope without the aid of Mr. Harper; the second might be met with candor.  Should he then be candid with this doubter, relate to him the facts as they had unrolled themselves before his own eyes;—­secret facts—­convincing ones—­facts which must prove to him that whether Georgian did or did not lie at the bottom of the mill-stream, the woman now in the house was his sister Anitra, lost to him and the rest of the family for many years, but now found again and restored to her position as a Hazen and Georgian’s twin.  The discovery might not prove welcome.  It would have a tendency to throw Mr. Hazen’s own claim into the disrepute he would cast on hers.  But this consideration could have no weight with Mr. Ransom.  He decided upon candor at all costs.  It suited his nature best, and it also suited the strange and doubtful situation.  Mr. Harper might have concluded differently, but Mr. Harper was not there to give advice; and the matter would not wait.  Little as he understood this Hazen, he recognized that he was not a man to trifle with.  Something would have to be said or done.

Meeting the latter’s eye frankly, he remarked: 

“I have no wish to keep anything back from you.  I am as much struck as you are by the mystery of this whole occurrence.  I was as hard to convince.  This is my story.  It involves all that is known here with the exception of such facts as have been kept from us by the three parties directly concerned—­of which three I consider you one.”

As the last four words fell from his lips he looked for some change, slight and hardly perceptible perhaps, in the other’s expression.  But he was doomed to disappointment.  The steady regard held, nothing moved about the man, not even the hand into which the poor disfigured chin had fallen.  Ransom suppressed a sigh.  His task was likely to prove a blind one.  He had a sense of stumbling in the dark, but the gaze he had hoped to see falter compelled him to proceed, and he told his story without subterfuge or suppression.