long with the possibility of meeting thus her past, to allow it to come with the shock of the unexpected. There had been no hour for forty years when these words might not be spoken to her. She did not even make the mistake of showing irritation in her answer:
"I would know why you have sought this interview, that it may be ended. As to the results of your employment, they concern your employers, not me."
"I know who was the mother of Theodore Wing." He spoke somewhat insistently, and not without a touch of menace in his voice. He had foreseen an easier task. He had a sense of personal wrong, in that she was making it so hard for him.
"It is her secret," she said, with just enough force to betoken impersonal indignation; "neither you nor the world have the right to drag it to the surface."
"I am willing it should remain a secret," he answered.
"Then you should never have told any one you knew it."
