What Armitage was asking was the right to seek his sister Shirley's hand in marriage, and the thing was absurd.

Moreover, who was John Armitage?
The question startled Claiborne into a realization of the fact that Armitage had volunteered considerable information without at all answering this question.

Dick Claiborne was a human being, and curious.
"Pardon me," he asked, "but are you an Englishman ?" "I am not," answered Armitage.

"I have been so long in America that I feel as much at home there as anywhere--but I am neither English nor American by birth; I am, on the other hand--" He hesitated for the barest second, and Claiborne was sensible of an intensification of interest; now at last there was to be a revelation that amounted to something.
"On the other hand," Armitage repeated, "I was born at Fontainebleau, where my parents lived for only a few months; but I do not consider that that fact makes me a Frenchman.

My mother is dead.