"Arnecliffe--Leonard Arnecliffe."
"Then why did you say it was Gilbert?"
"Gilbert?--I said my name was Gilbert?--What on earth do you mean?"
"To the waiter at 'The Bolton Arms.'"
"To the waiter--what the devil do you know about what I said to the waiter at 'The Bolton Arms'?" She was still; not this time because she could not have spoken, but because words surged up to her lips which she had the greatest difficulty in keeping back. Whether he misconstrued her silence as egregiously this time was not clear. His words, when he spoke again, were odd ones. "I've been looking for you all over Europe, and now that I've found you I'm hanged if I know how to begin what I've got to say." She looked up at him, as he towered above her in the gloom; she not only knew what she wished to say, but how she wished to say it, only she was afraid. "Miss Gilbert, your father and I were friends in quite an exceptional sense."
"Wasn't he like you?"
"In appearance? No; except that we both of us were tallish, and that once he was dark, like me; but when he died his hair was as white as snow. His was a strange story--did you know it?"
"How could I? I scarcely remember having seen him; he never wrote me a letter in his life; I don't think I ever saw my mother; I know nothing about either my father or my mother."
"So I gathered. I've been looking for you in order to tell you all about both; only--luck, and a certain gentleman, has been against me."
"How did you know that I was here?"