Ann made no answer. Somehow she felt she could not put any direct questions about this man whose changing, oddly contradictory moods had baffled her so completely and--although she would not have acknowledged it--had caught and held her imagination with equal completeness. Perhaps she was hardly actually aware how much the queer, abrupt owner of Heronsmere occupied her thoughts. Mrs. Hilyard, however, continued speaking without waiting to be questioned. "Eliot Coventry has had just the sort of experience to make him cynical," she went on in her pretty, dragging voice. "Particularly as regards women. His mother was a perfectly beautiful woman, with the temper of a fiend. She lived simply and solely for her own enjoyment, and never cared tuppence about either Eliot or his sister." "Oh, has he a sister?" The question sprang from Ann's lips without her own volition. "Yes. She was a very pretty girl, too, I remember." Ann's thoughts flew back to the day of the Fête des Narcisses, recalling the pretty woman whom she had observed driving with Eliot in the prize car. Probably, since he so disliked women in general, his companion on that occasion had been merely his sister! She felt oddly pleased and contented at this solution of a matter which had nagged her curiosity more than a little at the time. "Mrs. Coventry--the mother--was utterly selfish, and insisted upon her own way in everything." Cara was pursuing her recollections in a quiet, retrospective fashion which gave Ann the impression that they had no very deep or poignant interest for her. "If she _didn't_ get it--well, there were fireworks!"--smiling. "Once, I remember, Eliot crossed her wishes over something and she flew into a perfect frenzy of temper. There was a small Italian dagger lying on a table near, and she snatched it up and flung it straight at him. It struck him just below one of his eyes; that's how he came by that scar on his cheekbone. She might have blinded him," she added, and for a moment there was a faint tremor in her voice. "What a brute she must have been!" exclaimed Ann in horror. "Yes," agreed Cara. "He was unlucky in his mother." After a pause she went on: "And he was unlucky in the woman he loved. He wasn't at all well-off in those days, and she threw him over--broke off the engagement and married a very wealthy man instead." Ann felt her heart contract. "I suppose that's what makes him so bitter, then," she said in a low voice. "Probably--he still cares for her." "No." Cara shook her head. "Eliot Coventry isn't the sort of man to go on caring for a woman who'd proved herself unworthy. I think--I think he'd just wipe her clean out of his life." "It would be what she deserved," asserted Ann rather fiercely. "Yes, I suppose it would. But one can feel a little sorry for her. She spoilt her own life, too." "Did you know her, then?" "Yes, I knew her. I think the only excuse to be made for her is that she was very young when it all happened."