"From the very first it had seemed very strange that I had never heard a word about the Cromartys from mother, and as soon as I got to Keldale and met Lady Cromarty, I felt sure there was something wrong. I mean that I wasn't an ordinary distant relation. For one thing they never spoke of our relationship and exactly what sort of cousins we were, and considering how keen Sir Reginald is on his pedigree and all his relations and everybody, that alone made me certain I wasn't the ordinary kind. That was obvious, wasn't it?" "It seems so," the lawyer admitted cautiously. "Of course it was! Well, one day I happened to be looking over an old photograph album and suddenly I saw my father's photograph! Mother had a miniature of him--I have it still, and I was certain it was the same man. I pulled myself together and asked Sir Reginald in a very ordinary voice who that was, and I could see that both he and Lady Cromarty jumped a little. He had to tell me it was his brother Alfred and I discovered he had long been dead, but I didn't try to get any more information from them. I applied to Bisset." She gave a little laugh and looked at him with a touch of defiance. His inscrutable countenance appeared to annoy her. "Well?" he remarked. "Perhaps you think I oughtn't to have gone to a butler about such a thing, but Bisset is practically one of the family and I didn't give him the least idea of what I was after. I simply drew him on the subject of the Cromarty family history and among other things--that didn't so much interest me--I found that Mr. Alfred Cromarty was never married and seemed to have had rather a gay reputation." She looked at him with an expression that would have immediately converted any susceptible man into a fellow conspirator, and asked in her most enticing voice: "Need you ask what I guessed? What is the use in not telling me simply whether I have guessed right!" Silent Simon's face remained a mask. "What precisely did you guess?" "That my mother wasn't married," she said, her voice falling very low, "and I am really Sir Reginald's niece though he never can acknowledge it--and I don't want him to! But I do want to be sure. Dear Mr. Rattar, won't you tell me?" Dear Mr. Rattar never relaxed a muscle. "Your guess seems very probable," he admitted. "But tell me definitely." "Why?" he enquired coldly. "Oh, have you no _curiosity_ yourself--especially about who your parents were; supposing you didn't know?" "Then it's only out of curiosity that you enquired?" "Only!" she repeated with a world of woman's scorn. "But what sort of motives did you expect? I have walked in the whole way this morning just to end the suspense of wondering! Of course, I'll never tell a soul you told me." She threw on him a moving smile. "You needn't actually tell me outright. Just use some legal word--'Alibi' if I am right and 'forgery' if I'm wrong!"