“But your mother? Surely you know some of her people?”
“I have never even heard her speak of them,” I answered shortly.
“Strange! You don’t happen to remember her maiden name, do you?”
“I don’t know that I ever heard it,” I told him.
I began to wish that Mr. Marx would choose some other topic of conversation. Doubtless, it was exceedingly kind of him to take so much interest in my affairs and his questions proceeded from perfectly genuine motives, but my inability to answer any of them was becoming a little embarrassing.
“One more question I was going to ask you and it shall be the last,” he said, as though divining my feeling. “Were you born here?”
“I suppose so. I never heard that I was born anywhere else.”
There was another long silence and it seemed to me that Mr. Marx was very deep in thought. I was beginning to feel sleepy and, closing my eyes, I leaned right back among the soft, yielding cushions.
It was one of the wildest and roughest nights of the year. Both the carriage-windows were streaming with raindrops, and we could hear the wind howling across the open country, and whistling mournfully among the leafless trees.
We had accomplished about three-quarters of our journey and had just entered upon the blackest part of it. On either side of the road and running close up to it, without even the division of hedges, was a stretch of bare, open country, pleasant enough in summer time, but now a mere plain, on which were dotted about a few straggling plantations of sickly, stunted fir trees, among which the hurricane was making weird music.