A very respectable-looking woman answered Magdalen’s knock, and inviting her to enter, stood waiting for Mr. Grey and Guy, who had just reached the gate.
It was Magdalen who did most of the talking,—Magdalen who, without taking the chair offered her, broke out impetuously, “Are you Mrs. James Storms, and did you years ago,—say nineteen or twenty—know a Mrs. Clayton, in Cincinnati, and her daughter, Mrs. Grey,—Laura they called her?”
The woman, who seemed to be naturally a lady, cast a wondering glance at Magdalen, and replied:
“I am Mrs. Storms, and I knew Laura Clayton, or rather Mrs. Grey. Are you her daughter? You look like her as I remember her.”
Magdalen did not answer this question, but went on vehemently:
“Were you much with Mrs. Grey, and can you tell me anything about her starting for her home in New York, and if she had a baby then, and how old it was, and what dress did it wear? Try to remember, please, and tell me if you can.”
Mrs. Storms was wholly bewildered with all these interrogatories of a past she had not recalled in years, and looked inquiringly at Mr. Grey, who was standing by Magdalen, and who said with a smile:
“Not quite so fast. You confuse the woman with your rapid questions. Ask her one at a time; or perhaps it will be better for me to explain a little first.”
Then as briefly as possible he repeated what he thought necessary for Mrs. Storms to know of the business which had brought them there, and asked if she could help them any.
For a moment Mrs. Storms was too much surprised to speak, and stood staring, first at Magdalen and then at Mr. Grey, in a dazed, helpless kind of way.