I spoke breathlessly, for I wondered if Mrs. Walker had told of the Guilford Blake puzzle, as well; but after one look into the candid half-amused eyes I knew that this information had been withheld.
"Well, yes. She touched upon that, among other things."
"But what things?" I asked impatiently. At the door I heard the maid with the tea tray. "I suppose, however, just the usual things that people tell about us. That we have been homeless and penniless—except for this old barn—since I was a baby, and that, one by one, the pomps of power have been stripped from us?"
He looked at me soberly for a moment.
"Yes, she told me all this," he said.
"And that our historic rosewood furniture was sold, years ago, to Mrs. Hartwell Gill, the grocer's wife who used the chair-legs as battering-rams?"
He smiled.
"Against Oldburgh's unwelcoming doors? Yes."
"And that—"
"That you belonged to the most aristocratic family in the whole state," he interrupted softly. "So aristocratic that even the possession of the rosewood furniture is an open sesame! And of course this state is noted for its blooded beings, even in my own country."