"To the waiter--what the devil do you know about what I said to the waiter at 'The Bolton Arms'?" She was still; not this time because she could not have spoken, but because words surged up to her lips which she had the greatest difficulty in keeping back. Whether he misconstrued her silence as egregiously this time was not clear. His words, when he spoke again, were odd ones. "I've been looking for you all over Europe, and now that I've found you I'm hanged if I know how to begin what I've got to say." She looked up at him, as he towered above her in the gloom; she not only knew what she wished to say, but how she wished to say it, only she was afraid. "Miss Gilbert, your father and I were friends in quite an exceptional sense." "Wasn't he like you?" "In appearance? No; except that we both of us were tallish, and that once he was dark, like me; but when he died his hair was as white as snow. His was a strange story--did you know it?" "How could I? I scarcely remember having seen him; he never wrote me a letter in his life; I don't think I ever saw my mother; I know nothing about either my father or my mother." "So I gathered. I've been looking for you in order to tell you all about both; only--luck, and a certain gentleman, has been against me." "How did you know that I was here?" "By one of those greatest flukes in the world, which are the commonplaces of existence. I was at a friend's house on the other side of the river when two youngsters came in who said that they had seen a Dorothy Gilbert this afternoon at Mrs Vernon's garden-party; so, on the off-chance of your being my Dorothy Gilbert, I came. I take it that there is no doubt that you are my Dorothy Gilbert." "I am Dorothy Gilbert of Newcaster." She uttered the words in a tone of defiance which seemed to startle him. For a moment he was still. When he spoke again his voice was lower. "That's what I don't understand." "What don't you understand?" "The stories which the papers tell about you." "I don't know what they may be, but I think it's very possible that I should understand them if you were to tell me what they are." "But you had no hand in--in what took place at Newcaster." "Oh yes, I had." "Miss Gilbert! It's impossible!" "I saw you do it." "You saw me----" The man stopped; as if unwilling to complete the sentence; then asked: "What do you mean--by you saw me?" "I saw--what you did to him." "Miss Gilbert!" "It was because--I saw you do it that I ran away; I didn't want them to make me tell them what I'd seen." "Good God! what--what an extraordinary thing!" "Yes, you may well call it an extraordinary thing. Dorothy Gilbert, you're my prisoner; I arrest you for murdering George Emmett. And you, my lad, I don't know what your name is, but I arrest you too. You're both of you my prisoners; and, if you take my advice, you won't make any fuss, but you'll just come quietly; and to make sure you'll put these on--there's a bracelet for each of you."