Westerham repeated the words, and his face was blank in its amazement. Lady Kathleen caught his expression and her own face changed. She saw that Westerham's surprise was entirely genuine. She saw that he did not know!
Westerham repeated the words again, groping for some explanation of this extraordinary statement. He could find none. This, indeed, was the greatest mystery of all.
When he had slightly collected himself he drew a chair to the table and sat down heavily, facing Lady Kathleen.
“Don't you think,” he asked, “that we had better be plain with each other?”
Lady Kathleen's face was now a blank, as his own had been two minutes ago.
Almost roughly she brushed away the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand, and set her mouth and squared her shoulders as though about to do battle.
“I cannot understand it,” she said. “I cannot understand it at all. I had to distrust you, and so, though you declared you knew nothing, I did not believe you. But even if you know nothing it does not help us in the least. I am not able to disclose anything at all. It's my father's secret—not mine.”
Gently and persuasively Westerham urged her to tell him how the matter affected herself. But she declined, and remained obdurate to the close of the interview.
Before he ceased his pleading, however, Westerham counselled her to tell her father all that had passed, and begged her to urge Lord Penshurst to send for him the moment she arrived back in London.
This Kathleen consented to do, although she pointed out that her father would in all probability decline to believe in Westerham's _bona fides_.
He countered that argument by asserting that Lord Dunton would of a certainty establish his identity beyond all doubt. But still Lady Kathleen demurred.
“In any case,” she said, “it would be exceedingly difficult to arrange a meeting. Frankly, I don't see how you can help us, and there is only a week left.”
As she said this her eyes again filled with tears, and she clasped her hands with a despairing gesture.
“That there is only a week left,” persisted Westerham, “is all the more reason why I should be made acquainted with the facts at once.”
Kathleen, however, only shook her head and moaned a little to herself.