at last:

"So you did know my mother," she said under her breath; and the hushed
finality of her words set his strong hand trembling.

"Eileen's little daughter," he repeated. "Eileen Fane's child.... And
grown to womanhood.... Yes, I knew your mother--many years ago....
When I enlisted and went abroad.... Was it Sir Terence Soane who
married your mother?"

She shook her head. He stared at her, striving to concentrate, to
think. "There were other Soanes," he muttered, "the Ellet Water
folk--no?----But there were many Soanes among the landed gentry in
the East and North.... I cannot seem to recollect--the sudden
shock--hearing a song unexpectedly----"

His white forehead had grown damp under the curly hair now clinging to
it. He passed his handkerchief over his brow in a confused way, then
leaned heavily on the piano with both hands grasping it. For the ghost
of his youth was interfering, disputing his control over his own mind,
filling his ear with forgotten words, taking possession of his memory
and tormenting it with the distant echoes of a voice long dead.

Through the increasing chaos in his brain his strained gaze sought to
fix itself on this living, breathing face before him--the child of
Eileen Fane.

He made the effort:

"There were the Soanes of Colross----" But he got no farther that way,
for the twin spectres of his youth and _hers_ were busy with his
senses now; and he leaned more heavily on the piano, enduring with
lowered head the ghostly whirlwind rushing up out of that obscurity
and darkness where once, under summer skies, he had sowed a zephyr.

The girl had become rather white, too. One slim hand still rested on
the ivory keys, the other lay inert in her lap. And after a while she
raised her grey eyes to this man standing beside her:

"Did you ever hear of my mother's marriage?"

He looked at her in a dull way:

"No."

"You heard--nothing?"

"I heard that your mother had left Fane Court."

"What was Fane Court?"

Murtagh Skeel stared at her in silence.

"I don't know," she said, trembling a little. "I know nothing about
my mother. She died when I was a few months old."

"Do you mean that you don't know who your mother was? You don't know
who she married?" he asked, astounded.

"No."

"Good God!" he said, gazing at her. His tense features were working
now; the battle for self-control was visible to her, and she sat there
dumbly, looking on at the mute conflict which suddenly s