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stopped suddenly, and looked up at me.

You don't know anything about me, do you?" she asked. "Where I come

from, who I was before I married John--anything, in fact? Well, I will tell

you. I will make a father confessor of you. You are kind, I think--yes, I am

sure you are kind."

Somehow, I was not quite as elated as I might have been. I remembered that

Cynthia had begun her confidences in much the same way. Besides, a father

confessor should be elderly, it is not at all the role for a young man.

My father was English," said Mrs. Cavendish, "but my mother was a

Russian."

Ah," I said, "now I understand--"

Understand what?"

A hint of something foreign--different--that there has always been about

you."

"My mother was very beautiful, I believe. I don't know, because I never saw

her. She died when I was quite a little child. I believe there was some

tragedy connected with her death--she took an overdose of some sleeping

draught by mistake. However that may be, my father was broken-hearted.

Shortly afterwards, he went into the Consular Service. Everywhere he went,

I went with him. When I was twenty-three, I had been nearly all over the

world. It was a splendid life--I loved it."

There was a smile on her face, and her head was thrown back. She seemed

living in the memory of those old glad days.

"Then my father died. He left me very badly off. I had to go and live with

some old aunts in Yorkshire." She shuddered. "You will understand me

when I say that it was a deadly life for a girl brought up as I had been. The

narrowness, the deadly monotony of it, almost drove me mad." She paused a

minute, and added in a different tone: "And then I met John Cavendish."

"Yes?"

"You can imagine that, from my aunts' point of view, it was a very good

match for me. But I can honestly say it was not this fact which weighed with

149

The Mysterious Affair at Styles