“Oh, did I say that? Not all! It wouldn’t be true to say all.”
“Well, the majority of them, even the old ones, you said——”
“Oh, no; not all,” he gazed out of the window towards a rolling view of the Lake several hundred feet below them, “for I distinctly remember a good old coloured cook who didn’t.... But then I was only a child.”
She laughed. “Last night I couldn’t have seen the humour of anything. Do you know, Sir Richard, I could have struck you last night? If I had had my riding crop in my hand I would have lashed you across the face. Now, psychologist explain that brain storm, if you can.”
He did not turn his head from the window. The scenery took all his eyes. In the darkness of the previous night he was aware that the carriage had been travelling up a considerable grade, but he was not prepared for this elevation of about four hundred feet above the level of the Lake. The house—the Southern mansion type—turned its four enormous Ionic columns half-way about so as to enjoy the vista down the blue Keuka and the far ridges of high, misty hills.
“How can you keep your eyes away from that wonderful view?” he asked.
“It is wonderful, isn’t it?” She moved her chair. “And don’t believe for a moment that I think lightly of it. I was born in the room just above this—my own room, now—and that view has coloured my whole life. Nothing in Europe was half so good to me, because that”—she threw a touch of a kiss to the Lake—“that is home.”
“I quite understand you,” he spoke appreciatively, “although I never had the sensation of home.... It must be thrilling ... to be able to come—home.”
“You poor boy.”
Curiosity about his possible past came over her. It was not the first time, but she withheld the question that rose to her mind. Besides, the mother was hovering near. And, besides again, he must not now be asked to tell anything, not while he was a guest in this house.