“Your sister!” in utter amaze.
“Every one says they see it in the colour of our eyes.”
“Every one”—she seemed able to do nothing but repeat his words.
“Well, my uncle Lancelot, and—and my mother. No one else knows yet. They want to spare my aunt till this concern is over.”
“But how can it be?”
“It is a horrid business altogether!” he said, taking her down to the unfrequented parts of the lower end of the garden, where they could walk up and down hidden by the bushes and shrubs. “You knew that my father was an artist and musician, who fled from over patronage.”
“I think I have heard so.”
“He married a singing-woman, and she grew tired of him, and of me, deserted and divorced him in Chicago, when I was ten months old. He was the dearest, most devoted of fathers, till he and I were devoured by the Indians. If they had completed their operations on my scalp, it would have been all the better for me. Instead of which Travis picked me up, brought me home, and they made me as much of an heir of all the traditions as nature would permit, all ignoring that not only was my father Bohemian ingrain, but that my mother was—in short—one of the gipsies of civilization. They never expected to hear of her again, but behold, the rapturous discovery has taken place. She recognised Lance, the only one of the family she had ever seen before, and then the voice of blood—more truly the voice of £ s. d.—exerted itself.”
“How was it she did not find you out before?”
“My father seems to have concealed his full name; I remember his being called Tom Wood. She married in her own line after casting him off, and this pretty little thing is her child—the only tolerable part of it.”