“Scarcely, since my appointment with Lake is for to-morrow.”
“Oh, how prosaic you are—talking of appointments, when you ought to saddle your fleetest steed and spur him headlong over hill and dale to discover the truth!”
“Ah, I’m not a budding novelist, you know.”
“No, only a full-blown tragic poet.” Zoe raised her voice as Maurice beat a hasty retreat. The varying literary fortunes of the two afforded endless opportunity for mutual chaff, but whereas Zoe gloried in her abortive efforts at fiction, on the ground that they were too good for any publisher to accept, Maurice was inclined to be ashamed of his success. The romantic was Zoe’s province, not his, and the only excitement he felt over her momentous discovery was due to the possible disappointment in store for Professor Panagiotis, for whom he had conceived a certain distrust, due to his mysterious hints and half-revelations. There was no enthusiasm, therefore, in his tone when he entered the library on the following afternoon.
“Well,” he said, “our name is Teffany all right. I have interviewed old Lake, and you may sleep in peace. There was a reason for the Smith business, and I suppose you would call it romantic. I call it cracked.”
“Oh, do tell me!” cried Zoe. “Was it a feud?”
“Nobody knows. Lake could only tell me what his father told him, and what they guessed. His father had just gone into the office when our great-grandmother and her little boy arrived in the neighbourhood about seventy years ago. She had excellent bankers’ references, and began to negotiate for the purchase of this place. She told them that she was left sole guardian of her son, and that she had been obliged to remove from her former part of the country on account of grave dangers threatening his life. For safety’s sake, they would be known for the present by the name of Smith. She was a handsome woman, and the Lakes thought there must be some revengeful discarded lover in the case. She bought this place and lived here unmolested, and when her son was twenty-one, he resumed the name of Teffany, which the lawyers heard then for the first time. At the same time, he sold Penteffan, which had been managed by a London firm. He would have liked to go back there, but his mother objected so vehemently that he humoured her, especially since the old house had been allowed to fall into decay. The Lakes could never discover anything to account for her horror of the place, except that the people remembered two foreigners coming and making inquiries about the family soon after she left. That’s absolutely all they know.”
“Oh, Maurice, how thrilling!” cried Zoe, drawing a long breath. “Do you think the house was haunted? or—no, I am sure it was smugglers. Perhaps she had betrayed them to the revenue officers, and they meant to kidnap her child in revenge. I wonder if there’s anything about it in the papers you have brought. Shall we look at them now?”
“No, nonsense! Leave them till the Professor comes. Let’s go and see how the new croquet-lawn is getting on.”
The Professor arrived the next day, casting keen, curious glances about him. The sober stateliness of the house, the old family servants, the unobtrusive perfection of every detail indoors and out, and the easy kindliness of the young master and mistress—all were, so to speak, noted in his memory and labelled for reference. He remarked also Zoe’s unconcealed eagerness for the hour when the family papers were to be examined, and the tolerant resignation with which Maurice awaited it. He would find the motive force in the sister, the staying power in the brother, he assured himself again.