I kept away from the house until dinnertime, when I was received quite as an old friend by Alice and Mrs. Farnsworth. The table talk was of Celtic poetry, and proved less disturbing to Antoine than the previous night's discussion of ghosts.
Their day had been spent, they explained, in a further examination of my uncle's Japanese loot, and they had taken a long walk beyond the estate's boundaries and were enthusiastic about the landscape.
"It's so beautifully peaceful all about here," Alice murmured. "I feel that I never want to move again."
"That's a real tribute to America," Mrs. Farnsworth remarked; "for Alice dearly loves new scenes. She inherited a taste for travel from her father, who put some new places on the maps, you know."
I didn't know and I wanted to ask questions about Alice's father, but as though anxious to frustrate such inquiries my aunt asked how close we were to the place made famous by Israel Putnam's spectacular escape from the British. She had read the story and would motor to the scene, she declared. It was quite clear that there were chapters in her life that were not to be opened for my perusal. No sooner had I caught a glimpse of a promising page than the book was politely closed. A curtain hung between the immediate present at Barton-on-the-Sound and other scenes and incidents of the girl's life; and Mrs. Farnsworth was equally detached from any tangible background. It seemed that I might meet them daily for the rest of my life in this same friendly fashion without adding a particle to my knowledge of them.
I became alert immediately when, as we rose from the table, Alice said, with the air of asking an unimportant favor:
"We were speaking last night of a man who has been asking for us here. His visits have alarmed the servants, but there is nothing to fear from him. You know"—she smiled at Mrs. Farnsworth—"it's rather he who seems to fear us; that, at least, is our impression, though we have no idea why he should do so. Still, it's rather good fun to find yourself an object of special attention and to be followed, even pursued. We've even led him on a little, haven't we, Constance?"
Mrs. Farnsworth laughingly admitted that they had led the gentleman on a trifle, "but with all circumspection," she protested.
"We met him here and there in Tokyo, and later were surprised to find him crossing on our steamer. We threw him off in the Canadian Rockies, where we stopped for a day, and eluded him in Chicago, where he was evidently lying in wait for us."
"Delightful!" I exclaimed.