“There were the Soanes of Colross——” But he got no farther that way, for the twin spectres of his youth and hers were busy with his senses now; and he leaned more heavily on the piano, enduring with lowered head the ghostly whirlwind rushing up out of that obscurity and darkness where once, under summer skies, he had sowed a zephyr.
The girl had become rather white, too. One slim hand still rested on the ivory keys, the other lay inert in her lap. And after a while she raised her grey eyes to this man standing beside her:
“Did you ever hear of my mother’s marriage?”
He looked at her in a dull way:
“No.”
“You heard—nothing?”
“I heard that your mother had left Fane Court.”
“What was Fane Court?”
Murtagh Skeel stared at her in silence.
“I don’t know,” she said, trembling a little. “I 326 know nothing about my mother. She died when I was a few months old.”