“Sent me to you?” queried Helen, in wonder.
“Yes. Somebody must have sent you,” said Mr. Grimes, watching her with his little eyes, in which there seemed to burn a very baleful look.
“You are mistaken. Nobody sent me,” said Helen, recovering a measure of her courage. She believed that this strange man was a coward. But why should he be afraid of her?
“You came clear across this continent to interview me about—about something that is gone and forgotten—almost before you were born?”
“It isn’t forgotten,” returned Helen, meaningly. “Such things are never forgotten. My father said so.”
“But it’s no use hauling everything to the surface of the pool again,” grumbled Mr. Grimes.
“That is about what Uncle Starkweather says; but I do not feel that way,” said Helen, slowly.
“Ha! Starkweather! Of course he’s in it. I might have known,” muttered the old man. “So he sent you to me?”
“No, sir. He objected to my coming,” declared Helen, quite convinced now that she should not deliver her uncle’s letter.
“The Starkweathers are the people you came East to visit?”