Adele laughed aloud. “I believe you are really a tip-top good fellow, in spite of everything,” she declared. “Do tell me what it is you are doing! I assure you you’re utterly wrong in thinking that I am a person to guard against, to keep secrets from. Come, don’t you see how much I really like you? And you won’t trust me! I suppose it is the blonde temperament, suspicious and unresponsive and calculating. Or no, I don’t mean that, you know I don’t, but you might repose more confidence in me, when I have told you everything.”
“Everything?” murmured Vestalia, sweetly.
“About papa’s pockets, you know.”
“Ah, yes.”
“It was all your fault,” urged Adele. “It was you who drove me to it. And if you don’t tell now, goodness only knows what crimes I may not be driven to commit, in addition.”
“Let me hasten to avert this woful catastrophe,” cried Vestalia. “The matter is simplicity itself. I am by profession, trade, whatever you call it, a tracer of pedigrees, genealogies. I served my apprenticeship under an American lady, who worked entirely for American customers. She is dead now, and the business is broken up, and I have been idle for a long time. When I saw your father and heard his name, a thought occurred to me. I know a good deal about the Skinners in England.”
“Papa was born in England himself, you know,” interposed Adele, with rising interest.
“Yes, I know,” Vestalia went on. “As I said, I have exceptional sources of information about the family, and it occurred to me that very likely he would be glad to have the records searched, and a full pedigree drawn up. I wrote to him, accordingly—he had mentioned this hotel—and I came and saw him downstairs in the reception-room, and he seemed delighted with the idea, and gave me a commission at once. What was more important still, he was kind enough to pay me something in advance. It came just at the moment to—to supply a very urgent want, too, I can tell you.”
“Ah, poor girl!” said Adele, tenderly. “But why on earth were you afraid that I should know? I don’t believe your story about the hair, you know.”
“Really it was that,” protested Vestalia. “I could see that you didn’t like me. I was afraid of you—that is, of your prejudicing your father against me. And if you only knew how desperately I was in need of the job! Don’t you remember, you did look very sharply at me.”