"I am afraid I shall require more authority than that."
She pursed her lips and looked at the floor in silence, and then she rose.
"Well, if you absolutely refuse to tell me anything, Mr. Rattar, I suppose——"
A dejected little shrug completed her sentence, and as she turned towards the door her eloquent eyes looked at him for a moment beneath their long lashes with an expression in them that might have moved a statue. Although Simon Rattar had the reputation of being impervious to woman's wiles, he may have been moved by this unspoken appeal. He certainly seemed struck by something, for even as her back was turning towards him, he said suddenly, and in a distinctly different voice:
"You say you can guess yourself?"
She nodded, and added with a pathetic coaxing note in her low voice:
"But I want to know!"
"Supposing," he suggested, "you were to tell me precisely how much you do know already, and then I could judge whether the rest might or might not be divulged."
Her face brightened and she returned to her chair with a promptitude that suggested she was not unaccustomed to win a lost battle with these weapons.
"Well," she said, "it was only six months ago—when mother died—that I first had the least suspicion there was any mystery about me—anything to hide. I knew she hadn't always been happy and that her trouble had something to do with my father, simply because she hardly ever mentioned him. But she lived at Eastbourne just like plenty of other widows and we had a few friends, though never very many, and I was very happy at school, and so I never troubled much about things."