“Yes.”
“How can we tell? He evidently discovered, something—something of extreme importance which he wished to communicate to me.”
“I wonder why he makes those extraordinary statements about Dad—and the locked cupboard in his room?”
“I don’t know. Have you ever seen inside that cupboard?” I asked quickly, my eyes still upon the road.
“Never. But poor Guy seems to have regarded it as a kind of Bluebeard’s cupboard, doesn’t he?”
“He seems to have entertained a curious suspicion concerning your father,” I admitted. “Of course, he did not know half that I know.”
“Of course not,” she sighed. “He simply believed—as others do—that he is a country gentleman. And he would have been if—”
“If what?”
“If—if it had not been for that horrible woman,” she added, in a low hard voice. “Ah, Mr Kemball, if only you could know the truth—if only I dare tell you. But I can’t—I can’t betray the man who has been so good and kind to me all my life.”
“But could I not, if I knew the actual truth, be of service to him?” I suggested. “Could I not be of service to him for your sake?” I added, in a low earnest tone, my eyes fixed upon her pale, troubled countenance.