Page:Early Autumn (1926).pdf/105

 "I was right about Savina Pentland," he said. "She was a first cousin and not a second cousin of Toby Cane."

Olivia displayed an interest by saying, "Was that what you wrote to the Transcript about?"

"Yes . . . and I was sure that the genealogical editor was wrong. See . . . here it is in one of Jared Pentland's letters at the time she was drowned. . . . Jared was her husband. . . . He refers to Toby Cane as her only male first cousin."

"That will help you a great deal," said Olivia, "won't it?"

"It will help clear up the chapter about the origins of her family." And then, after a little pause, "I wish that I could get some trace of the correspondence between Savina Pentland and Cane. I'm sure it would be full of things . . . but it seems not to exist . . . only one or two letters which tell nothing."

And then he relapsed again into a complete and passionate silence, lost in the rustle of old books and yellowed letters, leaving the legend of Savina Pentland to take possession of the others in the room.

The memory of this woman had a way of stealing in upon the family unaware, quite without their willing it. She was always there in the house, more lively than any of the more sober ancestors, perhaps because of them all she alone had been touched by splendor; she alone had been in her reckless way a great lady. There was a power in her recklessness and extravagance which came, in the end, to obscure all those other plain, solemn-faced, thrifty wives whose portraits adorned the hall of Pentlands, much as a rising sun extinguishes the feeble light of the stars. And about her obscure origin there clung a perpetual aura of romance, since there was no one to know just who her mother was or exactly whence she came. The mother was born perhaps of stock no humbler than the first shopkeeping Pentland to land on the Cape, but there was in