(How extraordinary that he and Sydney Vandeleur should both be “men”!)
If he only wouldn’t keep me; if he’d only just tell me to go, and get it over....
But his first remark took me absolutely by surprise.
“Now, Miss Trant. If you don’t mind, I want to ask you a few questions. Don’t think them impertinent, for they are not so intended, and they are necessary to the matter in hand. And—please don’t misunderstand them.”
Here his alert face grew even more business-like. His keen grey eyes met my startled brown ones steadily for a moment. Then he added, in an emphatic, “underlined” sort of tone:
“There is nothing in these questions to which your father, or anyone belonging to you, could take any exception. You understand?”
“Understand”—No! I certainly didn’t. What could he mean me to understand? I hadn’t grasped it even when he repeated the question a trifle impatiently.
“You do understand that, Miss Trant?”
“Oh—er—yes—of course,” I murmured, in duty bound.
But I was so utterly dazed by this unlooked-for flight-off-at-a-tangent of the Governor’s that I heard myself answering as if in a dream the questions he put next.