Why? I wondered.
She looked at me steadily for some moments.
“It seems almost incredible, Dick,” she said at last, speaking very slowly, and drawing herself away, “that knowing my father’s secret, you should ask those questions. Tell me, how did you come to make the terrible discovery about my father? How long have you known everything? Who told you about it?”
Chapter Ten.
Relates a Strange Incident.
Vera’s very direct questions took me aback, though I had expected them sooner or later. “Who told me?” I said, echoing the words in order to gain time for thought, my arms still about her. “Oh, I’m sure I can’t remember. I seem to have known it a long time.”
“It can’t have been such a very long time,” she answered, still looking at me in that queer way that made me feel uncomfortable. “Surely you must remember who told you. It is hardly the sort of thing one would be told every day—or even twice in one’s life, is it?”
“Honestly,” I said with quick decision, “I can’t tell you how I came to know it.”