But she avoided my gaze, while a flush overspreading her cheeks betrayed her embarrassment. "Because--well, because I did not know how far you might be trusted," was her frank, open response, after a moment's hesitation. "Indeed, I do not even now know whether you would still remain our friend and preserve the secret if the ugly truth became revealed to you!" CHAPTER SEVEN. DAWNAY MAKES CONFESSION. Her curious reply greatly puzzled me. What could be "the ugly truth" to which she had referred? At her side I sat in silence for some time. The car was tearing along a wide straight main road between dusty hedges and many telegraph wires, and as I glanced at her I saw that she was staring straight before her fixedly, with a strange hard look upon her beautiful countenance. Perhaps I might have been mistaken, but at my mention of the dead man I felt certain that I saw in her eyes the light of unshed tears. Through the busy town of Northampton we went, and out again on the road to Kettering--a road I knew well, having motored over it many times. In the centre of the latter town we turned sharply to the left, and, taking the Oakham Road, soon passed through the village of Great Oakley, and suddenly descending a very steep hill, on the summit, of which a castle was perched, we found ourselves in the wide straggling main street of Rockingham village. My fair companion spoke but little. She seemed suddenly to have become strangely preoccupied. Indeed, it struck me as though she had been seized by some sudden apprehension, by a thought which had crossed her mind for the first time. Her manner had completely changed. "Your father has been away in France since I met him?" I remarked, for want of something else to say. "Yes," she responded; "he has been moving rapidly from place to place for reasons to which I need not refer." "But why has he returned if there is still danger?" I queried. "I scarcely think there is further danger--at least at present," she answered. I was puzzled at her reply, but not for long, as I will relate. The car slipped through Rockingham, and when about two miles farther on swung abruptly through a handsome pair of lodge-gates and into a broad, well-timbered park, at last pulled up before a long, old-fashioned Jacobean mansion which commanded from its grey stone terrace fine views of the green undulating hills and rich pastures around. The old ivy-clad place, with its pointed gables and mullioned windows, was a good type of the stately English home, and as the car drew up at the porch the great door was flung open by a neat man-servant, who bowed low as we entered the fine hall, where the stone slabs were, I noticed, worn hollow by the tread of generations.