Then he added, rather hastily: “Of course, I don’t want to be impertinently curious. It only seems so strange to find such educated people buried here in the north woods. I don’t see how you live here. I—I—”
But the more he tried to explain the more confused he grew, and Margot merrily simplified matters by declaring:—
“You are curious, all the same, and so am I. Let’s tell each other all about everything, and then we’ll start straight without the bother of stopping as we go along. Do sit down and I’ll begin.”
“Ready.”
“There’s so little, I shan’t be long. My dear mother was Cecily Dutton, my Uncle Hugh’s twin. My father was Philip Romeyn, uncle’s closest friend. They were almost more than brothers to each other, always; though uncle was a student and, young as he was, a professor at Columbia. Father was a business man, a banker or a cashier in a bank. He wasn’t rich, but mother and uncle had money. From the time they were boys, uncle and father were fond of the woods. They were great hunters then, and spent all the time they could get up here in northern Maine. After the marriage mother begged to come with them, and it was her money bought this island, and the land along the shore of this lake as far as we can see from here. Much farther, too, of course, because the trees hide things. They built this log cabin, and it cost a great, great deal to do it. They had to bring the workmen so far, but it was finished at last, and everything was brought up here to make it—just as you see.”
“What an ideal existence!”
“Was it? I don’t know much about ideals, though uncle talks of them sometimes. It was real, that’s all. They were very, very happy. They loved each other so dearly. Angelique came from Canada to keep the house, and she says my mother was the sweetest woman she ever saw. Oh! I wish—I wish I could have seen her! Or that I might remember her. I’ll show you her portrait. It hangs in my own room.”
“Did she die?”
“Yes, when I was a year old. My father had died long before that, and my mother was broken-hearted. Even for uncle and me she could not bear to live. It was my father’s wish that we should come up here to stay, and Uncle Hugh left everything and came. I was to be reared ‘in the wilderness, where nothing evil comes,’ was what both my parents said. So I have been, and—that’s all.”
Adrian was silent for some moments. The girl’s face had grown dreamy and full of a pathetic tenderness, as it always did when she discussed her unknown father and mother, even with Angelique; though, in reality, she had not been allowed to miss what she had never known. Then she looked up with a smile and observed: “Your turn.”