"Your father's people are all dead, you tell me, and you know nothing of your mother's relations. But who was she? What was her name? Perhaps we could discover some kith and kin for you."
"My mother was called Miss Tonkins," I said.
"Called Miss Tonkins?"
"Yes."
"Then it was not her name. What do you mean?"
I hated these questions.
"I suppose it was her name. I never heard she had another."
"Tonkins," he said—"Tonkins," and he looked searchingly at me with his monk-of-the-Inquisition air.
I can be so irritating, not telling people things, when I like, and it was quite a while before he elicited the facts from me, which Mrs. Carruthers had often hurled at my head in moments of anger, that poor mamma's father had been Lord de Brandreth and her mother, Heaven knows who!
"So you see," I ended with, "I haven't any relations, after all, have I?"