"How about the name, Roger?" he asked. "Won't that be a little awkward? At home, you know. I suppose you couldn't wait till you found it out?"
Roger threw his jaw forward a bit and pursed his mouth, a trick he had when he was bothered but couldn't see any way out of it.
"No, I couldn't," he said thoughtfully. "In the first place, to tell you the truth, I don't much believe there's any chance of finding it out except by pure accident. There's not a scrap of evidence about the place, and it is undoubtedly intentional. I've opened every book in her father's room and there are no collections of old litter in any closet—there's no attic—and not a letter or bill in the house. A doctor came here once or twice, but he never mentioned her father's name in her hearing, and this Hester told her he came from New York. Caliban did the marketing and paid cash for everything. The telegraph operator, who is the only one I've spoken with in the town, represents the attitude of everybody there, probably, and he thinks, evidently, that an eccentric recluse lives here, and that his housekeeper is pretty close-mouthed and 'unsociable,' as he put it. It's rather strange that they aren't more curious, but she must have known how to deal with them, for whatever interest anybody may have felt died out long ago. They know the man had a daughter and that she's grown now, but this fellow told me that he'd heard she went barefoot most of the time, and there was a half rumour that she was feeble-minded, and that was why they kept so close. He thinks I'm boarding here, apparently. I suppose that any curious boys or tramps that might have been tempted over here were frightened off by the dogs—there used to be a pair of them."
He paused to fill his pipe again and Tip nodded comprehendingly.
"I see," he said, "it's an extraordinary situation, isn't it?"
Another pause, and he added with his eyes carefully off Roger's face:
"This housekeeper, now—you don't think it's possible——"
"No, I don't," Roger interrupted shortly. "Both she and the father have told Margarita that she resembled her mother, and that her mother was very good and very beautiful, but that she was not named after her. She died when the child was born, and Hester was with them then. Besides, her father used to correct her for using expressions of Hester's and forbade her to hold her knife and fork as Hester did, and things of that sort. She never ate with them, either. Margarita says that Hester loved her father but was always afraid of him."
Caliban had the table cleared now, and Tip and I stared into our reflections in the beautiful, shining mahogany where our plates had been. I suppose the same thing was in both our minds. What a strange marriage for a Bradley! What an incongruous effect, in steady old Roger's life! When one considered all the Jacksons and Searses and Cabots he might have married—there was one particular red-cheeked, big-waisted Cabot girl that old Madam Bradley had long and openly favoured—one could but gasp at the present situation. A surnameless Miranda, whose only possessions were a chest of money, a few pieces of old mahogany and a brindled hound!
"I haven't seen the young lady yet, you know, Roger," Tip reminded him gently at last, and Roger, coming out of his abstraction with a quick smile, stepped to the foot of the stairs and called, "Margarita! Margarita! Viens, chérie!"