“I’ll come across now, if you can let me see that experiment,” he said. “I’m more interested than I can tell you; and I want to discuss some points with you. I’m taking the evening off anyway, and I may as well make myself useful. How long will it take—an hour? All right. Flint, will you amuse Miss Huntingtower till I get back?”
He and Henley-Davenport went out, leaving us to return upstairs.
For a time we talked of one thing and another till at last, by what transitions I cannot now remember, we touched upon her secretaryship, and I asked her how she came to occupy the post.
“Do you really want to know?” she asked. “I warn you it will be rather a long story if I tell you it; and it will probably seem rather dull to you.”
“Don’t be afraid. I am sure I shall not find it dull.”
“Well, let’s pretend we are characters in a novel and the distressed heroine will proceed to relate the story of her life. ‘I was born of poor but honest parents....’ Will that do to start?”
“Must you begin at the beginning? I usually skip first chapters myself.”
“I’m sorry, but I have to begin fairly early if you are to understand. Mr. Nordenholt isn’t my uncle, really, you know. My father was a distant relation of his. When Father and Mother died I was quite a tiny child; I only remember them vaguely now: and Uncle Stanley was the only relation I had in the world. I believe, too, that I was the only relative he had, certainly I was the only one I ever heard him speak of, except Father and Mother. It was just after he had made his fortune in Canada, and he must have been about thirty then. It appears that Father had written to him much earlier, asking him to look after me if anything happened to him and Mother; and when they were drowned—it was a boating accident—he came home to this country and took me to live with him.
“I was only about eight then, and I missed Father and Mother so. I cried and cried; and he spent hours with me, trying to comfort me. Somehow he did me good. I don’t know how he did it; but he seemed to understand so well.”
Again I had come across a new side in Nordenholt’s character. I could hardly picture that grim figure—for even at thirty Nordenholt must have been grim—comforting that tiny scrap of humanity in distress. And yet she was right: he did understand.