“Indeed I am!” she replied brightly. “How charming the country is beginning to look now!”
After this, he couldn’t very well go on with the subject; but he felt no hesitation in approaching Hunter in a more direct fashion when they were alone.
“That’s a very remarkable young woman who opened the door for me,” he said. His eyes were on the other man’s face, and he saw him turn red.
“Yes,” said Hunter. “She—she is.”
But Alan’s eyes were still on him, and he was obliged to continue.
“She’s—not exactly a servant, you know,” he said. “In fact, she’s a sort of—relation. Helps my aunt, you know. She—she is remarkable, Lorrimer, very.”
Alan gave serious attention to this problem. His legal training did not make him disposed to believe everything he heard, though he was too intelligent to go to the other extreme and believe nothing.
What was the explanation? Had Hunter made a misalliance, which he was ashamed of, and wanted to conceal? No—marriage with that girl wouldn’t be a misalliance for any one, and she wasn’t the sort who would consent to being concealed.
His sister? There was no possible reason for keeping a sister like that hidden. If it was the case that she really was a poor relation kept as a servant to help Mrs. Carew, then it was a very bad case, and the aunt and the nephew might well be ashamed of themselves. Alan believed that they were ashamed, too.
Hunter had mentioned that he was going to take Mrs. Carew to the moving pictures that evening, and Alan decided then and there that he would use that time for further investigations.