"What about Lieutenant Varley?" inquired Alice.
"Lieutenant Varley?" and Estelle's voice showed that she was puzzled.
"The young officer who said he met you in Portland."
"Oh, yes. I had forgotten. Well, I have absolutely no recollection of that, and I'm sure I would remember if I had been in the West. I'm certain I never was there."
"And yet if you weren't in the West how did you learn to ride so well?" Ruth queried.
"That's another part of the puzzle, my dear. Riding seems to come as natural to me as breathing. I don't seem ever to have learned it any more than I learned how to dance. I seem always to have known how."
"There's only one way to account for that," Alice said.
"How?"
"From the fact that you must have started to learn to ride and to dance when you were very young—a mere child."
"I suppose that would account for it. And yet, I can't remember ever being a child. I don't recall having played with dolls or having made mud pies. For me my existence begins about three or four years back, and goes on from there, mostly in moving pictures."