“I said to Mrs. Stewart,” he confided, a little red in the face from the exertion, “after I went home the other day, that you would think me an old gossip, for saying what I did about Walker and Miss Louise.”

“Nothing of the sort,” I protested.

“The fact is,” he went on, evidently justifying him self, “I got that piece of information just as we get a lot of things, through the kitchen end of the house.  Young Walker’s chauffeur—­Walker’s more fashionable than I am, and he goes around the country in a Stanhope car—­well, his chauffeur comes to see our servant girl, and he told her the whole thing.  I thought it was probable, because Walker spent a lot of time up here last summer, when the family was here, and besides, Riggs, that’s Walker’s man, had a very pat little story about the doctor’s building a house on this property, just at the foot of the hill.  The sugar, please.”

The egg-nog was finished.  Drop by drop the liquor had cooked the egg, and now, with a final whisk, a last toss in the shaker, it was ready, a symphony in gold and white.  The doctor sniffed it.

“Real eggs, real milk, and a touch of real Kentucky whisky,” he said.

He insisted on carrying it up himself, but at the foot of the stairs he paused.

“Riggs said the plans were drawn for the house,” he said, harking back to the old subject.  “Drawn by Huston in town.  So I naturally believed him.”

When the doctor came down, I was ready with a question.

“Doctor,” I asked, “is there any one in the neighborhood named Carrington?  Nina Carrington?”

“Carrington?” He wrinkled his forehead.  “Carrington?  No, I don’t remember any such family.  There used to be Covingtons down the creek.”

“The name was Carrington,” I said, and the subject lapsed.

Gertrude and Halsey went for a long walk that afternoon, and Louise slept.  Time hung heavy on my hands, and I did as I had fallen into a habit of doing lately—­I sat down and thought things over.  One result of my meditations was that I got up suddenly and went to the telephone.  I had taken the most intense dislike to this Doctor Walker, whom I had never seen, and who was being talked of in the countryside as the fiance of Louise Armstrong.

I knew Sam Huston well.  There had been a time, when Sam was a good deal younger than he is now, before he had married Anne Endicott, when I knew him even better.  So now I felt no hesitation in calling him over the telephone.  But when his office boy had given way to his confidential clerk, and that functionary had condescended to connect his employer’s desk telephone, I was somewhat at a loss as to how to begin.

“Why, how are you, Rachel?” Sam said sonorously.  “Going to build that house at Rock View?” It was a twenty-year-old joke of his.

“Sometime, perhaps,” I said.  “Just now I want to ask you a question about something which is none of my business.”