Page:A strange, sad comedy (IA strangesadcomedy00seawiala).pdf/64

52 the gifted Mr. Romaine, of whose career vague rumors had reached the quiet Virginia country neighborhood which he had left so long ago. Far back in the dark ages, about 1835, when Colonel Corbin had made a memorable trip in a sailing-vessel to Europe, Mr. Romaine had been an attaché of the American legation in London; he had resigned that appointment, but he seemed to have taken a disgust to his native country, and had never returned to it. And Letty had a dim impression of having heard that Miss Jemima in her youth had had a slight weakness for the handsome Romaine. But it was so far in the distant past as to be quite shadowy. There was a superstition afloat that Mr. Romaine had made an enormous fortune in some way, and his conduct about Shrewsbury certainly indicated it. The place had been farmed on shares for a generation back, and the profits paid the taxes, and no more. But the house, which was a fine old mansion, had never been suffered to fall into decay, and was kept in a state of repair little short of marvelous in Virginia. Nobody was permitted to live in it, and at intervals of ten years the report would be started that Mr. Romaine intended returning