Does the Mail app store the email on the storage drive?

I bought a new Macbook pro the other day and I set up my mail account on it. It started syncing mail from about two years ago. I was worried that it might be storing mails on the storage disk and since I have the 256gb SSD, I didn't want the space to be taken up by emails from ages ago. I just wanted to know whether it does store a copy of the emails on the storage drive and if so, is there any way to just let it sync emails from only the last two months or so.

Thanks