‘Exactly,’ she said; ‘a very proper question. What has it to do with you? Listen, Mr. Redgrave. I have the most serious reasons for asking you to tell me what passed between yourself and my father on Saturday night.’ A look of feminine appeal passed swiftly across her features. Fleeting as it was, it sufficed to conquer Richard. A minute ago he had meant to dominate her. Now he was dominated. ‘I will tell you,’ he said simply, and told her--told her everthing without any reservation. ‘Then my father did not accuse you of being a professional spy?’ she demanded when Richard had finished. ‘No,’ said Richard, somewhat abashed. ‘He did not accuse you of having entered our house under entirely false pretences?’ ‘No,’ said Richard, still more abashed. There was a silence. ‘I wonder,’ she said calmly, glancing out of the window, ‘I wonder why he did not.’ She made the remark as though she were speculating privately upon a curious but not very important point. ‘Miss Craig!’ he exclaimed, with an air of being affronted. I read in a famous book the other day,’ she went on, ‘these words: “A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life.”’ ‘Do you mean to insinuate,’ said Richard, forced to defend himself, ‘that I am a professional spy?’ ‘I not only mean to insinuate it, I mean to assert it,’ she announced loftily, and then continued more quickly: ‘Mr. Redgrave, why did you come to spy on us? For two whole days I trusted you, and I liked you. But that night, as soon as I saw you behind me in the shed, the truth burst upon me. It was that, more than anything else, that caused me to faint. Why did you do it, Mr. Redgrave? My father liked you; I--I--I----’ She stopped for a moment. ‘Surely a man of your talents could have found a profession more honourable than that of a spy?’ She looked at him, less angry than reproachful. ‘I am a private detective,’ said Richard sullenly, ‘not a spy. My business is perfectly respectable.’ ‘Why trouble to play with words?’ she exclaimed impatiently. ‘We took you for a gentleman. In our simplicity we took you for a gentleman.’ ‘Which I trust I am,’ said Richard. ‘Prove it!’ she cried. ‘I will prove it in any manner you choose.’ ‘I accept your promise,’ she said. ‘I have travelled up to London to make an appeal to you to abandon this inquiry which you have undertaken--at whose instance I know not.’ ‘I cannot abandon it now,’ he said mischievously. ‘Why?’ she queried. ‘Question for question,’ he retorted. ‘How did you discover that I was a professional spy, as you call it?’