had to tell me it was his brother Alfred and I discovered he had long been dead, but I didn't try to get any more information from them. I applied to Bisset."
She gave a little laugh and looked at him with a touch of defiance. His inscrutable countenance appeared to annoy her.
"Well?" he remarked.
"Perhaps you think I oughtn't to have gone to a butler about such a thing, but Bisset is practically one of the family and I didn't give him the least idea of what I was after. I simply drew him on the subject of the Cromarty family history and among other things—that didn't so much interest me—I found that Mr. Alfred Cromarty was never married and seemed to have had rather a gay reputation."
She looked at him with an expression that would have immediately converted any susceptible man into a fellow conspirator, and asked in her most enticing voice:
"Need you ask what I guessed? What is the use in not telling me simply whether I have guessed right!"
Silent Simon's face remained a mask.
"What precisely did you guess?"
"That my mother wasn't married," she said, her voice falling very low, "and I am really Sir Reginald's niece though he never can acknowledge it—and I don't want him to! But I do want to be sure. Dear Mr. Rattar, won't you tell me?"
