"Well."
"Didn't you once say there was a Spanish strain in the real old Sussex peasant stock?"
The father eyed his son obliquely.
"So they say," he answered. "A Spanish galleon in the days of the Armada wrecked in Ruther Haven. That's the story. And I'm inclined to think there's something in it. Any way there's more foreign blood in the genuine peasantry of Sussex and Kent than in all the rest of England. Propinquity to the Continent, you see. All the refugees came here first—Dutchmen in the days of Alva; Huguenots after the Revocation; Royalists during the Terror; and smugglers of all sorts all the time from the days of Cæsar."
That evening, as Anne Caspar brushed her hair in the bedroom before going to bed, she heard her husband in the little dressing-room talking to himself as his manner was.
She stayed the sweeping motion of her hand and listened.
"I met Mr. Pigott in Church Street this evening," she called. "He stopped me and said, 'What's come to Ernie?'"
There was a silence; then the voice from next door answered,
"She's dark. That's all I know."