“Cora, you are not frank with me.  I know how you feel about staying at Rockhold, and also why you feel as you do; though I do not see by what agency or intuition you could have gained the knowledge you seem to possess.”

“Uncle Fabian, I have no positive knowledge of any cause why I should shrink from continuing in my natural home.  I have only suspicions, which perhaps you could clear up or confirm, if you would be frank with me.”

He drove on slowly in silence without answering her.  She continued: 

“I wrote to you while you were in Europe, informing you that Mrs. Stillwater had been invited by my grandfather to come to Rockhold to remain as long as should be convenient to herself.  You never replied to my letter.”

“I never got such a letter, Cora.  It must have been lost with others that miscarried among the Continental mails, when they were following me from one office to another.  But even if I had received such a letter, it could have made no difference.  I could not have prevented Mrs. Stillwater’s visit, nor the event that resulted from the visit.  I could not have written or returned in time.”

“Should you have prevented the visit or the marriage that followed if you could have done so?”

“Most certainly I should.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason that you, or Clarence, or Sylvan would have done so.  For the reason of its total unfitness.  But, Cora, my dear, I repeat that you have not been frank with me.  You are hiding something from me.”

“And I repeat, Uncle Fabian, that I have no positive knowledge of any—­”

“Yes; so you said before,” he exclaimed, interrupting her.  “You have no positive knowledge, but you have very strong suspicions founded upon very solid grounds!  Now, what are these grounds, my dear?  I am your uncle.  You should give me your confidence.”

If Mr. Fabian had not put the matter in this way, and if they had not been driving along the dark and over-shadowed road where the meeting branches of the trees above almost hid the light of the stars, so that only one or two occasionally gleamed through the foliage, Cora would never have been able to reply to her uncle as she did.

“Uncle Fabian, do you remember a certain warm night in September some five years ago, when we stopped at the Wirt House in Baltimore?”

“On our way home from Canada—­yes, I do.”

“My room was close that night and I could not sleep.  A little after midnight I got up and put oil my dressing-gown and went into the adjoining room, which was our private parlor, and I sat down in a cool corner in the shadow of the curtain and in the draught of the window.  I fell asleep, but was soon awakened by the sound of a door opening and some one whispering.  I was about to call out when I recognized your voice.  The room was pitch dark.  I could not see you; but then I was about to speak, when I recognized another voice—­Mrs. Stillwater’s.  You had let yourself in by your own key, through the door leading from the hall.  She had come in through the door leading from her room, which was on the opposite side of the parlor from mine.”