She looked at him steadily.
“Do you think he doesn’t know? He’s not mad, Mr Bayre. There’s something mysterious about him and about the place, but I don’t think it’s that. Last night he spoke to me in a way no madman ever could have done.”
“Don’t you know that many insane people could pass for sane, and do so pass? There are many forms of brain disease. There’s the insanity of delusions; there’s that which comes on in paroxysms and leaves the victim calm and even rational in the intervals. How can you explain such a scene as that I witnessed with my own eyes when I saw my uncle destroying his own house?”
Olwen looked puzzled.
“I’ve seen him tapping the walls, as if listening for some expected answer,” admitted she in a low voice. “And then I’ve wondered whether he only fancied that there was some person hidden about the house. But at other times—”
“Well!”
“I’ve thought differently, as you know.”
“There is a woman hidden in the house,” said Bayre, confidently.
And he described to her what he had seen on the previous night in the room with the barred windows. Olwen was not surprised.
“After all,” she said presently, “there’s something in what he said, that it’s no business of ours if he does keep some person shut up in the house.”