Reuben bowed and passed on, a little flattered by the other’s intimate tone, while Gay followed Kesiah into the drawing-room, and put a question to her which had perplexed him since the night of his arrival.

“Aunt Kesiah, was old Reuben Merryweather on friendly terms with my uncle?”

She started and looked at him with a nervous twitching of her eyelids.

“I think so, Jonathan, at least they appeared to be.  Old Reuben was born on the place when the Jordans still lived here, and I am sure your uncle felt that it would be unjust to remove him.  Then they fought through the war together and were both dangerously wounded in the same charge.”

He gazed at her a moment in silence, narrowing his intense blue eyes which were so like the eyes of Reuben’s granddaughter.

“Did my uncle show any particular interest in the girl?” he inquired, and added a little bitterly, “It’s not fair to me that I shouldn’t know just where I am standing.”

“Yes, he did show a particular interest in her and was anxious that she should be educated above her station.  She was even sent off to a boarding-school in Applegate, but she ran away during the middle of the second session and came home.  Her grandfather was ill with pneumonia, and she is sincerely devoted to him, I believe.”

“Was there any mention of her in Uncle Jonathan’s will?”

“None whatever.  He left instructions with Mr. Chamberlayne, however, which are to be made known next April on Molly’s twenty-first birthday.  It is all rather mysterious, but we only know that he owned considerable property in the far West, which he left away from us and in trust to his lawyer.  I suppose he thought your mother would not be alive when the girl came of age; for the doctors had agreed that she had only a few years to live at the utmost.”

“What in the devil did my poor mother have to do with it?”

She hesitated an instant, positively scowling in her perplexity.

“Only that I think—­I believe your Uncle Jonathan would have married the girl’s mother—­Janet Merryweather—­but for your mother’s influence.”

“How in the deuce!  You mean he feared the effect on her?”

“He broke it to her once—­his intention, I mean—­and for several days afterwards we quite despaired of her life.  It was then that she made him promise—­he was quite distracted with remorse for he adored Angela—­that he would never allude to it again while she was alive.  We thought then that it would be only for a short while, but she has outlived him ten years in spite of her heart disease.  One can never rely on doctors, you know.”

“But what became of the girl—­of Janet Merryweather, I mean?”

“That was the sad part, though it happened so long ago—­twenty years—­that people have almost forgotten.  It seems that your uncle had been desperate about her for a time—­before Angela came to live with him—­and Janet counted rather recklessly upon his keeping his word and marrying her as he had promised.  When her trouble came she went quite out of her mind—­perfectly harmless, I believe, and with lucid intervals in which she suffered from terrible melancholia.  Her child inherits many of her characteristics, I am told, though I’ve never heard any harm of the girl except that she flirts with all the clowns in the neighbourhood.”