quest of his other and more remote relations.


CHAPTER II


Peter Atherly had been four months in England, but knew little of the
country until one summer afternoon when his carriage rolled along the
well-ordered road between Nonningsby Station and Ashley Grange.

In that four months he had consulted authorities, examined records,
visited the Heralds' College, written letters, and made a few friends. A
rich American, tracing his genealogical tree, was not a new thing--even
in that day--in London; but there was something original and simple in
his methods, and so much that was grave, reserved, and un-American in
his personality, that it awakened interest. A recognition that he was a
foreigner, but a puzzled doubt, however, of his exact nationality, which
he found everywhere, at first pained him, but he became reconciled to
it at about the same time that his English acquaintances abandoned their
own reserve and caution before the greater reticence of this melancholy
American, and actually became the questioners! In this way his quest
became known only as a disclosure of his own courtesy, and offers
of assistance were pressed eagerly upon him. That was why Sir Edward
Atherly found himself gravely puzzled, as he sat with his family
solicitor one morning in the library of Ashley Grange.

"Humph!" said Sir Edward. "And you say he has absolutely no other
purpose in making these inquiries?"

"Positively none," returned the solicitor. "He is even willing to sign a