“But you don’t mean to tell me that you did not know her parents?”
“Only the mother, and she lived but a day after the coming of the child.”
“Did Mr. Radcliffe fail to find her father?”
Nervously Aoi clasped her hands together. She did not answer.
“Did he find her father?” repeated Mr. Blount.
Aoi looked at him with a gleam of stubbornness in her glance.
“If the excellency did not make confidant of you before he died, why should I do so, also?”
“It is your duty, madame.”
She shook her head slowly.
“Certainly, it is your duty. It is perfectly plain that Hyacinth is a white—that she’s not pure Japanese, at all events.”