“I thought it in your interest that I should first report to you,” he said. “There’s nothing in which any one can serve me in the Wing murder case,” she said, not sparing herself even the word “murder.” He looked at her as if he would say that that was a very proper bluff for her to put up, but that he knew the facts and was not to be fooled thereby. “In doing thoroughly my work,” he floundered on; “it has been impossible for me to overlook the remarkable paper left by Judge Parlin.” Even as she caught the full import of his words, she had a consciousness of the hopeless bungling of this man, in comparison with the other man, Trafford. No less surely had Trafford told her that he had learned the history of her early life; but he had, with a natural instinct, taken from the telling every sting that was not ineffaceable. This man was so intent upon the telling as not to have a thought for her. She made no acknowledgment, save that frigid bend of the head that was less acknowledgment than repulsion, and which he felt as disdain. It stung him to more brutal speech than he had intended: “You would have me, perhaps, report my discoveries in that connection to your sons.” If he had expected her to shrink or lose self-control, his was the disappointment. She had lived too long with the possibility of meeting thus her past, to allow it to come with the shock of the unexpected. There had been no hour for forty years when these words might not be spoken to her. She did not even make the mistake of showing irritation in her answer: “I would know why you have sought this interview, that it may be ended. As to the results of your employment, they concern your employers, not me.” “I know who was the mother of Theodore Wing.” He spoke somewhat insistently, and not without a touch of menace in his voice. He had foreseen an easier task. He had a sense of personal wrong, in that she was making it so hard for him. “It is her secret,” she said, with just enough force to betoken impersonal indignation; “neither you nor the world have the right to drag it to the surface.” “I am willing it should remain a secret,” he answered. “Then you should never have told any one you knew it.” “You are the only one I have told,” he said; “and that was necessary.” Clearly he expected her to ask, “Necessary to what?” but she did not make the mistake. She remained silent and left him to reknit the broken strand of discourse. “The moment of real danger to her will come,” he said, after waiting vainly for her to speak, until waiting became a palpable embarrassment; “when Wing’s murderer is put on trial.” Then, as with a sudden change of his line of attack, he continued: “Have you ever thought why your sons employed me in this case?” “No; nor cared,” she said. He had expected her to deny that she had known. “Because they know who the murderer is.” It was a relief to the tension upon her that she could show resentment without personal defence.