But his doubts and questionings fled before her presence.
Her recent questionings had prepared him for some act of duplicity, but he had by no means understood her present object, nor did she mean that he should.
Day after day they called at the house, ostensibly upon visits of condolence, and they pumped away at the mother and the children without seeming to know that their questionings were in bad taste.
The family fought shy of the questionings, and of course that was high testimony "if the Duchess was respectably born, why didn't they come out and prove it?--why did they, stick to that poor thin story about picking her up out of a steamboat explosion?"