“Only once or twice, I believe.”
“Her father and mother both died last winter.”
“Are you sure?”
“The man who told me was a traveller. Said she and Huntington’s mother were coming back to live East again. He was an Eastern man himself—knew Huntington, and got interested when he heard the name out in Arizona. ‘Alexander Huntington‘s’ rather an uncommon name, you know. But what could have been her motive for keeping everything so still?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Anthony, and let Carey talk on by himself till the car came. He was unwilling to discuss Rachel Redding’s affairs on a street corner even with Wayne Carey, because she was Juliet’s friend. But he had an idea as to why Rachel had been so reserved about herself. There were three men in the East whose interest in Huntington’s life or death had not been an altogether unbiased one. He could understand that the girl would not be eager to declare herself free to them, though the fact of Huntington’s death had reached them soon after its occurrence. But this other fact—that she had married him only at the last moment—it was obvious that the sort of girl Rachel Redding was would never make capital out of that strange occurrence, whatever its explanation might be. That Roger Barnes knew nothing of it he was quite certain.
He missed Juliet from the corner where she and the boy usually met him, and hurrying on to the house came upon his wife just as she was leaving.
“Oh, I didn’t realise I was late, dear,” she said, while Anthony swung his little son up to his shoulder, eliciting triumphant shouts as a reward. “Tony, Rachel is here.”
“Rachel?”
“Hush—yes; she’s upstairs, and her window is open. Walk down the orchard with me and I’ll tell you. Her coming, an hour ago, was what made me forget the time.”
“Carey was talking about her this afternoon,” said Anthony, strolling by her side and carrying on a frolic with the boy at the same time. “He’d just heard a singular thing—that she wasn’t married to Huntington till the very night he died.”