"Then there was your destination. Who but a Rothwell would ever want to stay at Mitchelhurst?"
"I see. I appear to have betrayed myself in a variety of ways." The discovery of his name seemed to have given him a little more ease of manner of a defiant and half-mocking kind. "What, is there something more?" he inquired, as his new acquaintance recommenced, "And then——"
"Yes, enough to make me very sure. You wear a ring on your little finger which your mother gave you. She used to wear it thirty years ago."
"True!" said Harding, in a tone of surprise. "You knew my mother then?"
"As I say—thirty years ago. She is still living, is she not? And in good health, I trust?"
"Yes." The young man looked at his ring. "You have a good memory," he said, with an inflection which seemed to convey that he would have ended the sentence with a name, had he known one.
The little gentleman took the hint.
"My name is Herbert Hayes." He spoke with careful precision, it was impossible to mistake the words, yet there was something tentative and questioning in their utterance. The young man's face betrayed a puzzled half-recognition.