Again that irresistible impulse came over her auditor. Was it really too soon? Why, it seemed as though he had known her for ages. Yet forty-eight hours ago he had not set eyes upon her. For a few moments he could hardly trust himself to speak. Then he said, gently:
“Tell me about your old home.” The bush behind them parts, suddenly, noiselessly. A head rises; a great grim black head, with distended eyeballs rolling in the moonlight. Then it sinks again and disappears, but they have not seen it.
“I suppose I have no right to feel leaving the old place as I did,” went on Lilian. “We were in a way interlopers, for it belonged to my stepfather, not to our family. I lived there, though, ever since I can remember, and my mother died there. We were very happy but for one thing: I had a stepsister about my own age who detested me. In short, we couldn’t get on together, hard though I tried to like her. So when Mr Dynevard died—”
“Who?”
“Mr Dynevard. My stepfather,” repeated Lilian.
“Of Dynevard Chase, near Sandcombe?”
“Yes. Why, you don’t mean to say you know it?” cried Lilian, lost in wonder.
“I wish I did. I’m afraid my utmost acquaintance with it lies in having driven past the place once or twice. Some distant relatives of mine lived not far from Sandcombe years ago. So that’s where you used to live?”
“Yes. This is a surprise. I shall make you talk to me such a lot about it,” she cried, gleefully. “You will soon be heartily tired of the subject, and will wish you had preserved a discreet silence.”
Claverton remembered the reluctance to dwell upon home topics which she had expressed when the two of them were driving up from the town, and it was with an extraordinary sense of relief that he did so. There was nothing more behind it than the painfulness of her change of circumstances to a proud and sensitive nature.