"I don't mind telling you at once. I feel I can talk to you as though we had known each other always. I said you rather startled me; but that was just a polite way of saying what I didn't exactly mean. You were examining a picture, and you turned unexpectedly and looked at me. There was an expression in your eyes that gave me a sort of shock, one of those emotional thrills which cannot be described in words. You might have been gazing at the ghost of someone very dear to you. Ah, forgive me if my tongue runs away with me, but I'm really excited. Of course, I understand now. You took me for my mother. And I am like her, am I not?" "So like that your first impression was right. I did nearly fall. The least push would have toppled me over. It was only the iron law of convention that enabled me to pass on as though nothing unusual had happened." "Then my mother and you were great friends?" "Yes." "You met her long before she was married?" "Yes." "Don't say yes, and leave it at that. Tell me things--everything you think I would like to know." "I may tell you this, without the slightest unfairness to--to your father. I loved your mother; but I was poor in those days, and dared not ask her to marry me. Then I was sent away to a distant mine--and--we drifted apart. When next I saw her she was a wife. Now, suppose we forget that bit of ancient history--because I hope to become friendly with your father--for your sake." The girl's eyes were glistening, and she had lost some of her exquisite color. She understood, or thought she understood; though she little dreamed what fierce longings, what vain regrets, were surging through the man's inmost core. Her quick intelligence noted certain slight hesitancies in his speech, which the ever-present feminine sense of romance attributed to tender recollections of the bygone days. With ready sympathy, she led him to talk of the ranch, of Bison, even of her grandfather, whom she remembered but vaguely. Power kept a close guard on his words, and easily focused her interest on topics which could not prove hurtful, even if she repeated the conversation to Marten in its entirety. Once only did their chat veer round to a dangerous quarter. "You said you saw my mother again after her marriage--where was that?" she asked. "In Newport, Rhode Island. I went there to buy horses, and we met unexpectedly in a hotel, just as you and I the other evening." "Was she--was she happy?" "Of course she was happy. She was one of the most beautiful women of her day, and married to a rich man who was certainly devoted to her. She moved in the best society, both in America and in Europe. By the way, her closest friends were the Van Raltens in the States and the Duchesse de Brasnes in Paris. Have you ever come across any members of those families?" "I know Mrs. Van Ralten very well. Her daughter was at school with me at Brussels." "Then Mr. Marten hardened his heart, and parted from you for a time?"