“She has indeed a different language,” cried Wolf, irrelevantly; and his mind reverted to the blackbird of Poll’s Camp. And then, as he saw her face droop wearily and her fingers tap the table: “Why did you take it all so nicely just now. Why did you talk of getting me work in Ramsgard?”

She made no reply to this. But after a moment she burst out: “Your father would laugh at you⁠ ⁠… he would!⁠ ⁠… He’d just laugh at you!”

“Well, we’d better not talk of it any more,” said Wolf sulkily.

He cast about in the depths of his consciousness, however, with the vindictiveness of defeat, for some line of attack that would disturb and agitate her.

“Miss Gault,” he began, while with her gaze fixed upon vacancy she stared through him and past him into the interior of the great tent, “do you mind if I ask you a direct question? I know that Mattie Smith is my father’s child; but what I want to ask you now is⁠—whose child is Olwen?”