“You won’t trust me?” I said.

“No.”

“You are afraid?”

“Do I look as if I was?”

“You are afraid of Sir Percival Glyde?”

“Am I?”

Her colour was rising, and her hands were at work again smoothing her gown.  I pressed the point farther and farther home, I went on without allowing her a moment of delay.

“Sir Percival has a high position in the world,” I said; “it would be no wonder if you were afraid of him.  Sir Percival is a powerful man, a baronet, the possessor of a fine estate, the descendant of a great family——­”

She amazed me beyond expression by suddenly bursting out laughing.

“Yes,” she repeated, in tones of the bitterest, steadiest contempt.  “A baronet, the possessor of a fine estate, the descendant of a great family.  Yes, indeed!  A great family—­ especially by the mother’s side.”

There was no time to reflect on the words that had just escaped her, there was only time to feel that they were well worth thinking over the moment I left the house.

“I am not here to dispute with you about family questions,” I said.  “I know nothing of Sir Percival’s mother——­”

“And you know as little of Sir Percival himself,” she interposed sharply.

“I advise you not to be too sure of that,” I rejoined.  “I know some things about him, and I suspect many more.”

“What do you suspect?”

“I’ll tell you what I don’t suspect.  I don’t suspect him of being Anne’s father.”

She started to her feet, and came close up to me with a look of fury.

“How dare you talk to me about Anne’s father!  How dare you say who was her father, or who wasn’t!” she broke out, her face quivering, her voice trembling with passion.

“The secret between you and Sir Percival is not that secret,” I persisted.  “The mystery which darkens Sir Percival’s life was not born with your daughter’s birth, and has not died with your daughter’s death.”

She drew back a step.  “Go!” she said, and pointed sternly to the door.

“There was no thought of the child in your heart or in his,” I went on, determined to press her back to her last defences.  “There was no bond of guilty love between you and him when you held those stolen meetings, when your husband found you whispering together under the vestry of the church.”

Her pointing hand instantly dropped to her side, and the deep flush of anger faded from her face while I spoke.  I saw the change pass over her—­I saw that hard, firm, fearless, self-possessed woman quail under a terror which her utmost resolution was not strong enough to resist when I said those five last words, “the vestry of the church.”

For a minute or more we stood looking at each other in silence.  I spoke first.

“Do you still refuse to trust me?” I asked.

She could not call the colour that had left it back to her face, but she had steadied her voice, she had recovered the defiant self-possession of her manner when she answered me.