Percy knew his mother well enough to know that if she had so willed, that must be the end. He was disappointed, and he felt hurt; but there was no help for it that he could see and he turned his attention to his meal.
And that would have been the end had Margery been content to leave the matter as it was; evidently, she was not satisfied. As she moved noiselessly about the small living-room she cast, ever and anon, inquiring glances upon her son, as though she had something to ask. And so she had. As is proved afterward, she was anxious to know what Percy had discovered or how much, if anything, he suspected with regard to her relations with the new smuggler chief.
At length she stepped close to his side and after a little further thought she said:
“Percy, what did you mean by the question you asked me? How could you suppose that I could know anything of Captain Tryon?”
The youth marked the anxiety in his mother’s voice and it gave him new cause for distrust. Had all been clear and above board she could not have felt thus.
“Mother,” he answered, calmly and kindly, but firmly, at the same time looking her straight in the eye. “I will only tell you what I know. I know that Ralph Tryon is a frequent visitor here and that you give him warm welcome. I know that he has more than once come to you for advice and assistance—”
“Advice, in what?” broke in the woman, eagerly. “In what has he ever asked me to advise him?”
“Ah! That I do not know. I only know what I have told you, and I know further that you have—” He stopped abruptly and paused. A moment later he added, with more feeling than he had before shown, “Mother, I have said enough in that strain. I have never watched you, never spied upon you, and never will. Heaven knows I seek only your good. Surely, you can not wonder that I, when I have seen a man so familiar and so warmly welcomed beneath this roof as is Ralph Tryon, should be anxious to know who and what he is. That, you know, I am convinced. What objections have you to telling me?”
“My dear boy, you see him commander of the Staghound and chief of the King’s Cove smugglers. Is not this enough? What reason have you for thinking anything else of him?”
“Mother!” replied the youth, quickly and sternly, with his gaze fixed sharply on her face, “listen to me. I know that Ralph Tryon is all that you said. I know, also, that he is more. Somewhere, at some time, I have seen him under other circumstances, if not under another name.”