“Oh, I had plenty of partners. I was not at all an object of charity, I can assure you! Mr. Somers asked for you, and said he was coming to see you immediately, and oh, Emma, I had such a curious experience! I met a girl to-night who might be my own sister, we are so much alike. She remarked the resemblance too, and Mr. Somers said that it struck him the first time he ever met me.”
“And who was she?”
“A Miss Chalgrove; the Honorable Dolly Chalgrove.”
I noticed that Emma gave a little start.
“My mother’s name was Chalgrove. This girl and I are so much alike that we might be cousins. She is so bright and animated and fascinating, that I took a fancy to her on the spot. I wish she was my cousin. It is really too bad that I have no relatives, not a single cousin, and Mr. Somers has fifty!”
“I dare say you have fifty third or fourth cousins somewhere in the west of Ireland,” said Emma shading her face with her hand (and I noticed with a sharp pang how thin and transparent that hand had become). “But it would take a lifetime to discover them, and probably they would not repay the trouble. Your father was not anxious to claim them. After his mother’s and his brother’s death, some ‘cousin’ took advantage of his absence abroad to claim the little property that was his by right. He might have gone to law, but he would not. It would have brought him home, and cost him another fortune.”
“Well, but, Emma, what about my mother’s relations?”
“They were a forbidden topic—a dead letter. Your father could not bear their name mentioned. They were very grand people, who expected their only daughter to make a brilliant match, instead of running away with a penniless army doctor—they never acknowledged her, never forgave her, no, never noticed her, no more than if she had ceased to exist. She fretted a good deal when she was in poor health. She wrote, and they returned the letter unopened. Your father, easy-going man as he was, resented this to the end of his days; and when he received a letter after her death, he treated it in the same fashion—returned it as it came.”
“But all this time, who are these Chalgroves? Please tell me, Emma, for of course you know.”