Lady Blanchemain sat up. "A baronet?" she said. "An American?"
"Alas, yes," said John, "a mere American. And one of the earliest creations,--by James the First, no less. His patent dates from 1612. But he doesn't use the title. He regards it, he pretends, as merged in a higher dignity."
"What higher dignity?" asked the lady, frowning.
"That of an American citizen, he says," chuckled John.
"And moreover," John gaily continued, "besides being descended from the Pilgrim Fathers, he's descended in other lines from half the peerage of Seventeenth Century England. And to top up with, if you please, he's descended from Alfred the Great. He's only an American, but he can show a clear descent bang down from Alfred the Great! I think the most exquisite, the most subtle and delicate pleasure I have ever experienced has been to see English people, people of yesterday, cheerfully patronizing him."
"You've enlarged my sphere of knowledge," said Lady Blanchemain, grimly. "I had never known that there was blood in America. Does this prodigious personage talk through his nose?"
"Worse luck, no," said John. "I wish he did--a little--just enough to smack of his soil, to possess local colour. No, he talks for all the world like you or me,--which exposes him to compliments in England. 'An American? Really?' our tactful people cry, when he avows his nationality 'Upon my word, I should never have suspected it.'"
"I suppose, with all the rest, he's rich?" asked Lady Blanchemain.
"Immensely," assented John. "Speaking of Fortune and her favours, she's withheld none from him."
"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, moving. "If _I_ had received a wire from a creature of such proportions, I've a feeling I'd answer it."
"I've a very similar feeling myself," laughed John. "When we turn back, if you think your coachman can be persuaded to stop at the telegraph office in the village, I'll give my feeling effect."
"I think we might turn back now," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's getting rather gloomy here." She looked round, with a little shudder, and then gave the necessary order. The valley had narrowed to what was scarcely more than a defile between two dark and rugged hillsides, --pine-covered hillsides that shut out the sun, smiting the air with chill and shadow, and turning the Rampio, whose brawl seemed somehow to increase the chill, turning the sparkling, sportive Rampio to the colour of slate. "It puts one in mind of brigands," she said, with another little shudder. But though the air was chilly, it was wonderfully, keenly fragrant with the incense of the pines.