She sat in a deep soft chair, twisting her long gloves into a hard string, and staring into the glow of the fire, and then with a "Faugh" at her own weakness, she threw the gloves onto the fender, and walked across to a telephone that stood on a side-table.
"Four-owe-seven-three Pad, please. No, Forty-seventy-three Paddington. Yes. Hullo? Hullo? Is that Four-nought-seven-three? This is Miss O'Neill. Liverpool rang up to say you wanted to speak to me. Who is that, please?"
"No one you know," came in the small clear voice of the telephone. "One of those sort of people who writes letters to the papers above some such signature as 'Well-Wisher.'"
"If you don't give me your name," said Kate sharply, "I shall ring off."
"I don't think you will when I tell you I'm going to give you some news about your father."
"My father unfortunately is dead. You've got hold of the wrong Miss O'Neill."
The telephone laughed. "Not a bit of it, it's the lady who is known generally as Kate O'Neill I'm speaking with, but whose real name is Katherine Meredith."
Now Kate knew that Mrs. Craven was only "Aunt Jane" by courtesy and adoption, and had naturally wondered many times over who her real people might have been. She had always been a very practical young woman, and had not worried herself unduly over the matter; but still being human, she had her share of curiosity, and though the subject had always been strictly taboo at the house in Princes' Park, still that did not hinder her from discussing it with her own thoughts. And now, "Katherine Meredith!"
"I think you had better tell me who you are," she said to the telephone.
"I prefer anonymity. Do you know Day-Pearce?"
"No. Yes, perhaps I do, if you mean Sir Edward Day-Pearce, the West African man. I don't know him personally."
"All the better," rasped the telephone. "Anyway, he is lecturing to-night in a non-Conformist temple in Westbourne Grove--the Athenæum, they call it. Begins at eight. He's certain to say something about Meredith. I should try to go if I were you."
"I shouldn't dream--" Kate began, when whizz went the bell, and she was cut off. She rang again, got the inquiry office, found that 4,073 was a hairdresser's shop, once more got 4,073, spoke to the proprietor, learned that the telephone had been hired for an hour by a gentleman who had some business to transact. No, the gentleman had just gone. No, they didn't know who he was: never seen him before--Miss O'Neill's ring off had a touch of temper in it.