"I can give you an hour," the girl said. "I must be in London by ten o'clock."
"Very well, I dare say we can manage it by that time. As I told you in my letter, I am a very old friend of your father. We were in one or two ventures
together, and some of them turned out to be very successful indeed. Did he ever mention my name?"
"I cannot call it to mind," the girl said. "And yet it is not a common name."
"It is not in the least common," Sartoris smiled. "Perhaps your father did not speak of me because we were not quite friends towards the last. At one time I was to be your guardian if anything happened to your father. But we need not go into that, because it is not material to the case at all." The girl nodded brightly, and her eyes expressed admiration of the beauty of the surroundings.
"I believe my guardian was Sir Charles Darryll," she said.
"So I understand," Sartoris proceeded in the same grave way. "It was a most extraordinary selection for a man with a keen business head like your father."
"But you are greatly mistaken," the girl exclaimed. "My father was a perfect child in business matters. Even I was capable of advising him for his good. I should say that there never lived a man who was so easily befooled as my father."
"Is that so?" Sartoris blurted out. "I'm—I mean, of course, yes, as to mere money, but he was clever enough in some ways. Still, the fact remains that he made Sir Charles Darryll your guardian. Did you ever trouble him at all?"
"I never so much as saw him, at least in a business sense."