"You mean as to motive?"
"Exactly. Why on earth should he risk his all to save the skin of a runaway convict? What can that convict be to him, Moya? Or is the sole explanation mere misplaced, chuckle-headed chivalry?"
"What should you say?" asked Moya quietly.
"I'll tell you frankly," said Theodore at once; "as things were I should have hesitated, but as things are there's no reason why I shouldn't say what I think. It's evidently some relation; a man only does that sort of thing for his flesh and blood. Now do you happen to remember, when this—I mean to say that—engagement was more or less in the air, that some of us rather wanted to know who his father was? Not that——"
"I know," Moya interrupted; "I'm not likely to forget it. So that's what you think, is it?"
"I do; by Jove I do! Wouldn't you say yourself——"
"No, I wouldn't; and no more need you. What are your ideas, by the way, if this is not the ghost of one? I congratulate you upon it from that point of view, if from no other!"
Theodore stuck a fresh cigarette between his lips, and struck the match with considerable vigour. It is not pleasant to be blown from one's own petard, or even scathed in one's own peculiar tone of offence.
"I simply wanted to spare your feelings, my dear girl," was the rejoinder, the last three words being thrown in for the special irritation of Moya. "Not that I see how it can matter now."
The special irritant ceased to gall.