"Oh, I'm not making it easy for you!" she cried. "Forgive me, please. I can bear anything you say—be sure of that, won't you? Come here!"
She drew him down to the couch beside her, still keeping his hand in hers. "This is better," she said softly. "Don't think of me as an inquisitor, but as a friend. What you have been can not matter any longer. But let us have no more deceit or reserve between us. You see, I don't quite understand yet about that day. How did you know who I was? How did you get my name?"
He summoned his courage as for an operation desperately necessary, and looked her straight in the eye.
"That was a trick. I read 'Clytie' inside your ring."
She took it without flinching. "But my last name—that wasn't there!"
"Oh, that was inspiration; I can't explain it. You see, I had happened to hear the name 'Payson' that morning, and it recalled the fact that I had seen it before upon a picture in Madam Grant's bedroom. Your father's name, 'Oliver Payson,' it was."
"In Madam Grant's room? How strange! I don't understand that."
"Nor I, either. Yet you say he knew her?" queried Granthope.
"Only slightly, so he gave me to understand, at least—still, that may not be true. He may have his reasons for not telling more." She turned to him with a strange, deliberate, questing expression, and said, "Who are you, anyway?" Then, "Was Madam Grant your mother?"
"I don't know. I've often suspected that it might be so, but somehow I don't quite believe it. I don't, at least, feel it."