Chapter Fourteen.
The Cipher of the Two C’s.
“I am going to ask you a question, dearest; I fear it is a painful one, but I think it ought to be put.”
It was Austin Wingate who spoke. He had dined with Sheila at Chesterfield Street, and after dinner the lovers had gone to her own sitting-room, which was on the first floor.
She looked at him steadfastly. “Painful or not, Austin, please put it. You would not hurt me, I know, unless you felt it was absolutely necessary.”
“Of course not, Sheila,” answered the young man fervently. “In our anxiety to solve this mystery concerning your father we must shrink from nothing. The question I am going to ask you, dear, is this: Have you ever had any cause to suspect there was some hidden mystery in your father’s life? Do not be offended—will you?”
She smiled faintly. “What is called a skeleton in the cupboard, you mean—eh? It seems impossible when one comes to consider the kind of man he was. In political matters he was reserved; that was natural. I have heard him laugh often over the efforts of people to draw him. But, in every other respect he seemed as frank and open as the day.”
“He gave me that impression certainly,” assented Wingate. “During my mother’s lifetime I don’t know that I counted greatly in his life. He was so wrapped up in her that he seemed to have no room for anybody else,” went on the girl, in a musing voice. “Then, after her death, and when his first passionate grief died down, he listened to me. I could not hope to fill her place, but I became very necessary to him. He has told me many times that but for me he would have been the most miserable man on earth. I gave him new interests, and weaned him away from his sad thoughts.”