"Because, just outside the smoking-room door in the hall, you both decided not to tell me--not to breathe a word of--of my father's visit. You thought the knowledge would trouble and frighten me. You thought it would hurt. Well, I was as certain that you would be greatly distressed to know that already I had the knowledge. So I held my tongue."
"And it did trouble you?"
"Yes."
"A great deal?"
"Yes," Cynthia admitted. "I was frightened. I did not know what power he might have. I knew you had fled from him for my sake."
"And since you have been here--during these three years--you have still been troubled, still frightened lest he should come and claim you with the law at his side?"
Though the old man could hardly speak above a whisper, he was strangely insistent in his questioning. The words came unevenly, with breaks between, and now and then a weak gasp for breath. Cynthia replied quite simply:
"Yes, here, too, I have thought that he might come. I used to be frightened at night. I used to hear him in the house."
And with every word she spoke the compunction and distress deepened in Daventry's mind.
"What a pity!" he said. "Neither of us guessed, not even Joan, who was quicker than I to notice things. And we thought we knew all about you, Cynthia!" A faint smile lit up his face. "How little, after all, we did know! For we could have spared you all this trouble. Read." And opening his hand he let her take from it the newspaper slip. She uttered a cry as she read the first lines.