“That’s Mad Anthony, our local Mother Shipton. He’s a prophet and soothsayer. Uncle Jefferson—that’s my body-servant—insists that he foretold my coming to Damory Court. If we had more time you could have your fortune told.”
“How thrilling!” she commented with half-humorous irony.
He pointed to a great white house set in a grove of trees. “That is Beechwood,” he told her, “the Beverley homestead. Young Beverley was the Knight of the Silver Cross. A fine old place, isn’t it? It was burned by the Indians during the French and Indian War. My great-great-great-grandfather—” He broke off. “But then, those old things won’t interest you.”
“They interest you a great deal, don’t they?” she asked.
“Yes,” he admitted, “they do. You see, my ancestors are such new acquaintances, I find them absorbing. You know when I lived in New York—”
“Last month.”
He laughed a little—not quite the laugh she had known in the past. “Yes, but I can hardly believe it; I seem to have been here half a lifetime. To think that a month ago I was a double-dyed New Yorker.”
“It’s been a strange experience for you. Don’t you feel rather Jekyl-and-Hydish?”
“That’s a terrible compound!” he laughed, as he swept the car round a curve, skilfully evading a bumping wagon-load of farm-hands. “In which capacity am I Mr. Hyde, by the way?”
She smiled at him round the edge of her blown veil. “Figures of speech aren’t to be analyzed. You are Dr. Jekyl in New York, anyway. You read what the papers said? No? It’s just as well; it would have been likely to turn your head.”