"Who?"
"Benjamin Corvet."
"No."
Alan turned to Constance; she had been listening intently, but she made no comment. "That is all, then," he said to Papo; "if I find out anything to your advantage, I'll let you know." He had aroused, he understood, expectations of benefit in these poor Indians. Something rose in Alan's throat and choked him. Those of whom Benjamin Corvet had so laboriously kept trace were, very many of them, of the sort of these Indians; that they had never heard of Benjamin Corvet was not more significant than that they were people of whose existence Benjamin Corvet could not have been expected to be aware. What conceivable bond could there have been between Alan's father and such poor people as these? Had his father wronged these people? Had he owed them something? This thought, which had been growing stronger with each succeeding step of Alan's investigations, chilled and horrified him now. Revolt against his father more active than ever before seized him, revolt stirring stronger with each recollection of his interviews with the people upon his list. As they walked away, Constance appreciated that he was feeling something deeply; she too was stirred.
"They all—all I have talked to—are like that," he said to her. "They all have lost some one upon the lakes."
In her feeling for him, she had laid her hand upon his arm; now her fingers tightened to sudden tenseness. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"Oh, it is not definite yet—not clear!" She felt the bitterness in his tone. "They have not any of them been able to make it wholly clear to me. It is like a record that has been—blurred. These original names must have been written down by my father many years ago—many, most of those people, I think—are dead; some are nearly forgotten. The only thing that is fully plain is that in every case my inquiries have led me to those who have lost one, and sometimes more than one relative upon the lakes."
Constance thrilled to a vague horror; it was not anything to which she could give definite reason. His tone quite as much as what he said was its cause. His experience plainly had been forcing him to bitterness against his father; and he did not know with certainty yet that his father was dead.
She had not found it possible to tell him that yet; now consciously she deferred telling him until she could take him to her home and show him what had come. The shrill whistling of the power yacht in which she and her party had come recalled to her that all were to return to the yacht for luncheon, and that they must be waiting for her.
"You'll lunch with us, of course," she said to Alan, "and then go back with us to Harbor Point. It's a day's journey around the two bays; but we've a boat here."