“I am very much interested in problems of heredity,” he admitted, quite aware that Lady Aviolet would see no eccentricity in such preoccupation on the part of a member of the professional classes. “Didn’t an Aviolet marry a Spaniard a good many generations ago?”
“Yes, indeed, not so very long after the Armada. Sir Basil Aviolet. I believe he was in Cornwall, seeing some property the family had there in those days, near Launceston, and he found this girl on the coast somewhere, and fell in love with her. Of course, she must have been English on her mother’s side, and her father a Spanish sailor. I forget her name, but we have a painting of her.”
She indicated the portrait amongst those hanging against the wall.
“It’s difficult to see what the attraction was, but it must have been very strong, or he could never have been so foolish as to marry her,” said Lady Aviolet simply.
The Spanish ancestress had not been beautiful. If the presentation was a faithful one, her long, narrow, wedge-like face had been of a uniformly brown complexion, her dark eyes set too close together, and her upper lip of an inordinate length.
“Some of her descendants would seem to have taken after her,” said Dr. Lucian.
“Yes. Ford is very like this picture. But her own two sons were regular Aviolets, as it happened. Their portraits are in the dining-room. But I suppose foreigners are always rather apt to be clever, so perhaps Ford is a throwback, in that sort of way.”
Widely apart though their respective standpoints for viewing this phenomenon might be, the doctor had long ago reached the same conclusion as had Lady Aviolet.
“A Latin mentality allied to a Saxon physique is a combination which presents some rather interesting contradictions.”
She looked at him quite blankly, and then said with a certain dignity: “I thoroughly believe in heredity myself. Look at the Amberly nose.”