gth said, "that you were pretending not to know,
and I wanted, in that case, to discover what other--what else you might
be holding back from me."

"Holding back from you? What _else_?" he echoed. "What else was there?"

"I wasn't sure, you see. Nothing that I knew," she affirmed frankly,
laughing away the sudden rigor of sadness on his face. "There was
another reason, though. There was something which I had been saving
for the very last moment to show you. But I was rather ashamed of
wanting to so much, and, after the way you had taken the rest of
the house, I hesitated. Just as I finally was going to, lunch was
ready--remember?"

Hastings awkwardly withdrew his right hand, which had been resting palm
downward on his knee, and thrust it into his pocket.

"Julia," he cried out, in characteristic disregard of all context,
"suppose Mr. Eberdeen should turn out to have been--well--a relative,
or something? It might account, you know, for my asking that question,
and--and for how everything here"--he looked inclusively round him--"for
how this all impressed me so."

She waited, hopeful of the time having at last come when he might
wish to confide in her whatever it was--if, indeed, he knew--that
had happened; but he only ingenuously continued to hold out to her
the possibility of his new idea.

"No," she told him, with a disappointment which she couldn't conceal,
"he wasn't. I've looked up his entire history. He died right here, and
he had no children. _Your_ pedigree I know by heart."

Hastings smiled at her thoroughness.

"What," he exclaimed, "if some unrecorded forebear of mine has eluded
you? Somebody," he dreamily improvised, "who knew this house, who was
familiar with every turn of the road, every habit of the mist. It's just
such a smug little, old, weather-worn town like Rockface, where any New
Englander is likely to find traces of forgotten ancestors."

The sound of footsteps made them both look toward the gate.

"Who is it? Why is he coming here?" Julia demanded half-indignantly
under her breath.

"The same old man I met, but so much older!" whispered Hastings,
unexpectedly puzzled whether to welcome or dread this intrusion.

"I have searched the streets through for him ever since," she
remonstrated; "I have asked everybody I saw, and no one in the whole
place could tell me of any old man answering his description."

They watched his slow, difficult approach over the gravel. He came
forward withou