"To you first, because—well, I will tell you that I, too, can claim kinship with the Talbot family. My great-grandfather and yours were brothers. Did you ever hear of Lovina Talbot?"
"Why, yes. Let me see; what have I heard? It will come back to me after a while. That branch of the Talbots left here years ago."
"Yes, just after the War of 1812. My great-grandfather, Cyrus, went to Western Pennsylvania. His only daughter, Lovina, was my grandmother. She married against his wishes, and then he married a second time—a Scotch-Irish girl of his neighborhood—and the families seem to have known little of one another after that. My father, Charles Jeffreys, was Lovina's son. He settled in Hartford, Connecticut. And now you have my pedigree."
"Why, then we are really blood relations. No wonder you were interested in the old Talbot place. Why—" she paused, hesitated, flushed up—"then it must be some of the Talbot property you are looking up."
"That is it; but I don't exactly know which it is, and without proof I can make no claim, as I have often said."
Linda ran over in her mind the various pieces of property which she was aware of having belonged to the original grants. "There was a good deal of it," she said. "Some of it was sold before my father's time, and he parted with more, so now all we have is the old homestead farm. I should like to know," she continued musingly, "which place you think it really is. I suppose it must be Timber Neck, for that was the first which passed out of our hands."
"I cannot tell, for I don't know exactly."
"Why didn't you make yourself known before? Didn't you know it would have made a difference to me—to us all, if you belonged, even remotely, to one of the old families?"
"Yes, I did, I suppose; but for that very reason I was slow to confess it. I came here under rather awkward circumstances. For a time I was in a position to be looked upon with suspicion, to be considered a mere adventurer. I may be yet," he continued, with a smile and a side glance at the girl, "even if I do pay my board bills and my laundress."
"Oh, we don't think that of you; we are quite sure you are genuine," Linda hastened to assure him.