“I sometimes think,” Lady Elizabeth went on, “that my unfortunate boy gets his eccentricity from his grandfather. All the rest of the family were so sensible. I can hear my Uncle Edmund saying to my father, ‘Robert, the world is a good enough place as it is, if only fools like you will let it be.’ A shrewd man Uncle Edmund. ‘You’ll put the workingman on top, and then you’ll be happy,’ he used to say. If Uncle Edmund could have had his way he would have hanged poor papa at Hyde Park Corner. And that is how I feel about that wretched boy upstairs.” Helen was hard set to keep her gravity. But she was just equal to the task. Moreover, with those sinister words of Saul Hartz still in her ears, there was yet a private end to gain. “Your mother’s people”--of malice prepense she paused; it was so important to frame an innocent-seeming question in just the right way--“were much too wise, I suppose, to give away their own?” “Dear me, yes,” was the emphatic answer. “Canny Scotch folk who knew better than to give away anything.” “Due in part, no doubt,” said Helen, “to living in a poor country where there may not be much to give. But I am perhaps a bit sensitive on the subject, because you see I happen to have Scotch blood myself.” The trap was laid with skill and masked with cunning. At any rate Lady Elizabeth walked right in. “My mother’s mother was a Sholto of Bannocksyde.” The proud old woman had an entirely misleading air of stating a fact of really very little importance. Helen, too, could be adept with the pride that knows how to ape humility. She was content to offer a little mild surprise, and that was all. Everything, so far, was according to plan. She was quite aware that John’s great grandmother was a Sholto of Bannocksyde, but Lady Elizabeth was not aware that the Sholtos of Virginia were a cadet branch of the same ancient line. With becoming modesty, Helen now revealed this interesting fact. Lady Elizabeth proceeded at once to “sit up and take notice.” It was as if her guest had suddenly “come alive.” Helen could not resist a smile. A strange land, this England! her impious thought. “Tell me, my dear,” A new note had entered the raven voice of the old Die-hard. “Tell me, did your people go over with Columbus?” “I forget the year Columbus sailed,” said Helen demurely. “We went over, I believe, in 1680.” “Burke will tell us,” said Lady Elizabeth with simple faith. On that point, Burke was hardly so clear as John’s mother expected. Helen was able to convince her, all the same, that in the year 1680 her fathers had settled in Virginia, and that her own parents were still living on the banks of Rose River in a house which had been built by the original pioneer, Douglas Graeme Sholto. XXI