"Yes. Some people of that name lived here years ago. We were distantly related. In fact, that is how the property came into dad's possession. But he never really went into details. One day he said he had made a will, leaving me everything, subject to a life interest for mother, and that when he was dead a lawyer would tell me all that I ought to know. Then I cried at the horrid thought that he would have to die at all, and he laughed at me, and that was the last I ever heard of it. Why do you ask?"
"You remember that we promised not to hide anything from one another?"
"Of course I remember."
"Well, then, I think I have hit on a sort of a clew to the Ogilvey part of the mystery, at any rate. By the merest chance, while awaiting the return of Mr. Burt's man from the village, our talk turned on the history of this house. He spoke of the Faulkners, and mentioned the fact that the eldest son of a daughter of the family, a Mrs. Ogilvey, was born here. That would be some fifty odd years ago. How old is your father?"
"Fifty-four."
"The dates tally, at all events."
Meg knitted her brows over this cryptic remark.
"But," she said, "if you imply that my father may be the son of a Mrs. Ogilvey, that would mean that his name never was Garth."
"Exactly."
"Isn't such a guess rather improbable? I am twenty-two, and I was born in this very house, and I lived here twenty years except during school terms at Brighton and in Brussels, and we were known as Garths during all that long time."