“Oh, we like them very well,” answered the colonel, who, in his easy nature, generally avowed a liking for everybody. “They are connections of my wife’s.”
“Connections of your wife’s!” repeated Herbert quickly. “I did not know that.”
“I’m not sure that I knew it myself, until we came to compare notes,” avowed the colonel. “Any way, I did not remember it. Sir Dace Fontaine’s sister married——. Stop; let me consider—how was it?”
Grace laughed. The colonel laughed also.
“I know it now. My wife’s sister married a Captain Pym: it is many years ago. Captain Pym was a widower, and his first wife was a sister of Dace Fontaine’s. Yes, that’s it. Poor Pym and his wife died soon; both of them in India: and so, you see, we lost sight of the connection altogether; it slipped out of memory.”
“Were there any children?”
“The first wife had one son, who was, I believe, taken to by his father’s relatives. That was all. Well, you’ll come this evening,” added the colonel, turning to depart. “I must make haste back home, for they don’t know yet who’s coming and who’s not.”
A few days previously to this, we had taken up our abode at Crabb Cot, and found that some people named Fontaine had come to the neighbourhood, and were living at Maythorn Bank. Naturally the Squire wanted to know who they were and what they were. And as they were fated to play a conspicuous part in the drama I am about to relate, I must give to them a word of introduction. Important people need it, you know.
Dace Fontaine belonged to the West Indies and was attached to the civil service there. He became judge, or sheriff, or something of the kind; had been instrumental in quelling a riot of the blacks, and was knighted for it. He married rather late in life, in his forty-first year, a young American lady. This young lady’s mother—it is curious how things come about!—was first cousin to John Paul, the Islip lawyer. Lady Fontaine soon persuaded her husband to quit the West Indies for America. Being well off, for he had amassed money, he could do as he pleased; and to America they went with their two daughters. From that time they lived sometimes in America, sometimes in the West Indies: Sir Dace would not quite abandon his old home there. Changes came as the years went on: Lady Fontaine died; Sir Dace lost a good portion of his fortune through some adverse speculation. A disappointed man, he resolved to come to England and settle down on some property that had fallen to him in right of his wife; a small estate called Oxlip Grange, which lay between Islip and Crabb. Any way, old Paul got a letter, saying they were on the road. However, when they arrived, they found that the tenants at Oxlip Grange could not be got to go out of it without proper notice—which anybody but Sir Dace Fontaine would have known to be reasonable. After some cavilling, the tenants agreed to leave at the end of six months; and the Fontaines went into that pretty little place, Maythorn Bank, then to be let furnished, until the time should expire. So there they were, located close to us at Crabb Cot, Sir Dace Fontaine and his two daughters.
Colonel Letsom had included me in the dinner invitation, for which I felt obliged to him: I was curious to see what the Fontaines were like. Tom Coney said one of the girls was beautiful, lovely—like an angel: the other was a little quick, dark young woman, who seemed to have a will of her own.