He seemed to consider the point for a moment, and then he said:
"I am not at all sure that I am at liberty to tell you, Miss Farmond, without further consultation."
"Has Sir Reginald really any good reasons for not telling me?"
"No," she confessed. "He and Lady Cromarty have been so frightfully kind, and yet so--so reserved on that subject, that I have never liked to ask them direct. But they know that I have guessed, and they haven't done anything to prevent me finding out more for myself, which means that they really are quite willing to let me find out if I can."
"I am afraid I shall require more authority than that."
She pursed her lips and looked at the floor in silence, and then she rose.
"Well, if you absolutely refuse to tell me _anything_, Mr. Rattar, I suppose----"
A dejected little shrug completed her sentence, and as she turned towards the door her eloquent eyes looked at him for a moment beneath their long lashes with an expression in them that might have moved a statue. Although Simon Rattar had the reputation of being impervious to woman's wiles, he may have been moved by this unspoken appeal. He certainly seemed struck by something, for even as her back was turning towards him, he said suddenly, and in a distinctly different voice:
She nodded, and added with a pathetic coaxing note in her low voice:
"Supposing," he suggested, "you were to tell me precisely how much you do know already, and then I could judge whether the rest might or might not be divulged."
Her face brightened and she returned to her chair with a promptitude that suggested she was not unaccustomed to win a lost battle with these weapons.
"Well," she said, "it was only six months ago--when mother died--that I first had the least suspicion there was any mystery about me--anything to hide. I knew she hadn't always been happy and that her trouble had something to do with my father, simply because she hardly ever mentioned him. But she lived at Eastbourne just like plenty of other widows and we had a few friends, though never very many, and I was very happy at school, and so I never troubled much about things."
"And knew nothing up till six months ago?" asked Simon, who was following her story very attentively.