“What is your candid opinion of your Cousin Geoffrey, young lady?” said the little man, jumping up and walking over to the fireplace. “He is the ideal sort of rich cousin, is he not?”
I laughed. My laugh seemed to please the owner of the dirty house. He smiled again faintly, looking hard into my face, and said:—“I forget your name, tell it to me again.”
“Rosamund Lindley.”
“Ah, Lindley!” He started slightly. “I have put down no Lindleys in my list of relatives. Rosamund Lindley! Are you my seventh, eighth, or tenth cousin, child? I have cousins, I assure you, twenty degrees removed, most affectionate people. Extraordinary! I can’t make out what they see in me.”
“My mother was your first cousin,” I said boldly. “Her name was the same as yours—Rutherford. Before she was married she was known to her friends as Mary Rutherford.”
I expected this remark to make a sensation. It did. The little man turned his back on me, gazed for a couple of minutes into the empty grate, then flashed round, and pointed to one of the worm-eaten chairs.
“Sit down, Rosamund Lindley, you—you have astonished me. You have given me a shock. In short you have mentioned the only relative who is not—not very affectionate. So you are Mary Rutherford’s daughter? You are not like her. I can’t compliment you by saying that you are. Did—did Mary Rutherford send you to me?”
“Most assuredly she did not. I have come entirely of my own free will. I had to coax my mother for a whole week before she would even give me your address.”
“But she gave it at last?”
“I made her.”