Young Teffany considered the matter gravely, and then laughed. “Rather not!” he said. “Zoe’s an awfully clever girl, and writes a good bit, but she has never dabbled in poetry any more than me. She was just as much surprised at the way the thing turned out as I was. And as to making her poem pass into my mind without my knowing it—why, she couldn’t do it. I’m as certain of that as I am of anything, though I think a lot of her—but of course I don’t tell her so.”
“My dear sir, you have already grasped one of the main secrets of the management of the female sex,” said the Professor sententiously. “But may I suggest a variation of your reincarnation theory? I am at present engaged in following up my larger work by tracing the dispersal of the Greeks who survived the fall of Czarigrad, and it occurs to me that your family may be descended from one of them.”
He scanned his companion’s face closely, as though to discover whether the idea was new to him, but the young man only laughed. “A case of inherited memory? I’m afraid it’s no go, sir. There’s nothing in the least Greek about us.”
“Four centuries of English marriages would go far to obliterate racial traits,” was the dry reply. “Your Christian name is Greek, at any rate.”
“All our names are. It’s a kind of tradition in the family. My father was Theodore, and his father and grandfather were both Constantine. However far back you go, it’s always Basil and Gregory and so on for the men, and Dorothea and Katharine and names of that sort for the women.”
“That is very curious,” with repressed eagerness. “And you are sure there is no tradition of a Greek ancestry?”
“None that I know of. But my sister would be a better person to ask. She’s had flu., you know, with a touch of bronchitis, or else she’d have been here to-day, and she said she was going to forget her sorrows in rummaging among the family papers. There are a few at home, and some at the lawyer’s. But really, I’m afraid there’s not much to find out. We have only been settled at our present place for sixty or seventy years—horribly new, you see.”
“Then where was your family established before that?” The Professor leaned forward anxiously.
“Oh, somewhere in the wilds of Cornwall. My grandfather could just remember the old place. My sister and I talk sometimes of making a pilgrimage down there—seeking the cradle of our race, you know—but I believe it’s only a farmhouse now.”
“The cradle of your race!” with measureless contempt. “My dear Mr Teffany”—the Professor modified the eagerness of his tone as his hearer looked at him in astonishment—“I must see those papers—any family relics you may possess. What this identification, if it is established, may mean to me—to you—I hardly dare think. I—I had traced the family of which I am in search as far as Penteffan on the Cornish coast, and there all sign of them was lost. This is like new life to me. You will not refuse your help?”