I had always understood that Miss Galindo had once been in much better
circumstances, but I had never liked to ask any questions respecting her.
But about this time many things came out respecting her former life,
which I will try and arrange: not however, in the order in which I heard
them, but rather as they occurred.
Miss Galindo was the daughter of a clergyman in Westmoreland. Her father
was the younger brother of a baronet, his ancestor having been one of
those of James the First’s creation. This baronet-uncle of Miss Galindo
was one of the queer, out-of-the-way people who were bred at that time,
and in that northern district of England. I never heard much of him from
any one, besides this one great fact: that he had early disappeared from
his family, which indeed only consisted of a brother and sister who died
unmarried, and lived no one knew where,—somewhere on the Continent, it
was supposed, for he had never returned from the grand tour which he had
been sent to make, according to the general fashion of the day, as soon
as he had left Oxford. He corresponded occasionally with his brother the
clergyman; but the letters passed through a banker’s hands; the banker
being pledged to secrecy, and, as he told Mr. Galindo, having the
penalty, if he broke his pledge, of losing the whole profitable business,
and of having the management of the baronet’s affairs taken out of his
hands, without any advantage accruing to the inquirer, for Sir Lawrence
had told Messrs. Graham that, in case his place of residence was revealed
by them, not only would he cease to bank with them, but instantly take
measures to baffle any future inquiries as to his whereabouts, by
removing to some distant country.
Sir Lawrence paid a certain sum of money to his brother’s account every
year; but the time of this payment varied, and it was sometimes eighteen
or nineteen months between the deposits; then, again, it would not be
above a quarter of the time, showing that he intended it to be annual,
but, as this intention was never expressed in words, it was impossible to
rely upon it, and a great deal of this money was swallowed up by the
necessity Mr. Galindo felt himself under of living in the large, old,
rambling family mansion, which had been one of Sir Lawrence’s rarely
expressed desires. Mr. and Mrs. Galindo often planned to live upon their
own small fortune and the income derived from the living (a vicarage, of
which the great tithes went to Sir Lawrence as lay impropriator), so as
to put-by the payments made by the baronet, for the benefit of
Laurentia—our Miss Galindo. But I suppose they found it difficult to
live economically in a large house, even though they had it rent free.
They had to keep up with hereditary neighbours and friends, and could
hardly help doing it in the hereditary manner.
One of these neighbours, a Mr. Gibson, had a son a few years older than
Laurentia. The families were sufficiently intimate for the young people
to see a good deal of each other: and I was told that this young Mr. Mark
Gibson was an unusually prepossessing man (he seemed to have impressed
every one who spoke of him to me as being a handsome, manly, kind-hearted
fellow), just what a girl would be sure to find most agreeable. The
parents either forgot that their children were growing up to man’s and
woman’s estate, or thought that the intimacy and probable attachment
would be no bad thing, even if it did lead to a marriage. Still, nothing
was ever said by young Gibson till later on, when it was too late, as it
turned out. He went to and from Oxford; he shot and fished with Mr.
Galindo, or came to the Mere to skate in winter-time; was asked to
accompany Mr. Galindo to the Hall, as the latter returned to the quiet
dinner with his wife and daughter; and so, and so, it went on, nobody
much knew how, until one day, when Mr. Galindo received a formal letter
from his brother’s bankers, announcing Sir Lawrence’s death, of malaria
fever, at Albano, and congratulating Sir Hubert on his accession to the
estates and the baronetcy. The king is dead—“Long live the king!” as I
have since heard that the French express it.
Sir Hubert and his wife were greatly surprised. Sir Lawrence was but
two years older than his brother; and they had never heard of any
illness till they heard of his death. They were sorry; very much
shocked; but still a little elated at the succession to the baronetcy
and estates. The London bankers had managed everything well. There was
a large sum of ready money in their hands, at Sir Hubert’s service,
until he should touch his rents, the rent-roll being eight thousand
a-year. And only Laurentia to inherit it all! Her mother, a poor
clergyman’s daughter, began to plan all sorts of fine marriages for
her; nor was her father much behind his wife in his ambition. They took
her up to London, when they went to buy new carriages, and dresses, and
furniture. And it was then and there she made my lady’s acquaintance.
How it was that they came to take a fancy to each other, I cannot say.
My lady was of the old nobility,—grand, compose, gentle, and stately in
her ways. Miss Galindo must always have been hurried in her manner, and
her energy must have shown itself in inquisitiveness and oddness even
in her youth. But I don’t pretend to account for things: I only narrate
them. And the fact was this:—that the elegant, fastidious countess
was attracted to the country girl, who on her part almost worshipped
my lady. My lady’s notice of their daughter made her parents think,
I suppose, that there was no match that she might not command; she,
the heiress of eight thousand a-year, and visiting about among earls
and dukes. So when they came back to their old Westmoreland Hall, and
Mark Gibson rode over to offer his hand and his heart, and prospective
estate of nine hundred a-year, to his old companion and playfellow,
Laurentia, Sir Hubert and Lady Galindo made very short work of it.
They refused him plumply themselves; and when he begged to be allowed
to speak to Laurentia, they found some excuse for refusing him the
opportunity of so doing, until they had talked to her themselves, and
brought up every argument and fact in their power to convince her—a
plain girl, and conscious of her plainness—that Mr. Mark Gibson had
never thought of her in the way of marriage till after her father’s
accession to his fortune; and that it was the estate—not the young
lady—that he was in love with. I suppose it will never be known in
this world how far this supposition of theirs was true. My Lady Ludlow
had always spoken as if it was; but perhaps events, which came to her
knowledge about this time, altered her opinion. At any rate, the end
of it was, Laurentia refused Mark, and almost broke her heart in doing
so. He discovered the suspicions of Sir Hubert and Lady Galindo, and
that they had persuaded their daughter to share in them. So he flung
off with high words, saying that they did not know a true heart when
they met with one; and that although he had never offered till after
Sir Lawrence’s death, yet that his father knew all along that he had
been attached to Laurentia, only that he, being the eldest of five
children, and having as yet no profession, had had to conceal, rather
than to express, an attachment, which, in those days, he had believed
was reciprocated. He had always meant to study for the bar, and the
end of all he had hoped for had been to earn a moderate income, which
he might ask Laurentia to share. This, or something like it, was what
he said. But his reference to his father cut two ways. Old Mr. Gibson
was known to be very keen about money. It was just as likely that he
would urge Mark to make love to the heiress, now she was an heiress, as
that he would have restrained him previously, as Mark said he had done.
When this was repeated to Mark, he became proudly reserved, or sullen,
and said that Laurentia, at any rate, might have known him better. He
left the country, and went up to London to study law soon afterwards;
and Sir Hubert and Lady Galindo thought they were well rid of him. But
Laurentia never ceased reproaching herself, and never did to her dying
day, as I believe. The words, “She might have known me better,” told
to her by some kind friend or other, rankled in her mind, and were
never forgotten. Her father and mother took her up to London the next
year; but she did not care to visit—dreaded going out even for a drive,
lest she should see Mark Gibson’s reproachful eyes—pined and lost her
health. Lady Ludlow saw this change with regret, and was told the cause
by Lady Galindo, who of course, gave her own version of Mark’s conduct
and motives. My lady never spoke to Miss Galindo about it, but tried
constantly to interest and please her. It was at this time that my lady
told Miss Galindo so much about her own early life, and about Hanbury,
that Miss Galindo resolved, if ever she could, she would go and see the
old place which her friend loved so well. The end of it all was, that
she came to live there, as we know.
But a great change was to come first. Before Sir Hubert and Lady Galindo
had left London on this, their second visit, they had a letter from the
lawyer, whom they employed, saying that Sir Lawrence had left an heir,
his legitimate child by an Italian woman of low rank; at least, legal
claims to the title and property had been sent into him on the boy’s
behalf. Sir Lawrence had always been a man of adventurous and artistic,
rather than of luxurious tastes; and it was supposed, when all came to be
proved at the trial, that he was captivated by the free, beautiful life
they lead in Italy, and had married this Neapolitan fisherman’s daughter,
who had people about her shrewd enough to see that the ceremony was
legally performed. She and her husband had wandered about the shores of
the Mediterranean for years, leading a happy, careless, irresponsible
life, unencumbered by any duties except those connected with a rather
numerous family. It was enough for her that they never wanted money, and
that her husband’s love was always continued to her. She hated the name
of England—wicked, cold, heretic England—and avoided the mention of any
subjects connected with her husband’s early life. So that, when he died
at Albano, she was almost roused out of her vehement grief to anger with
the Italian doctor, who declared that he must write to a certain address
to announce the death of Lawrence Galindo. For some time, she feared
lest English barbarians might come down upon her, making a claim to the
children. She hid herself and them in the Abruzzi, living upon the sale
of what furniture and jewels Sir Lawrence had died possessed of. When
these failed, she returned to Naples, which she had not visited since her
marriage. Her father was dead; but her brother inherited some of his
keenness. He interested the priests, who made inquiries and found that
the Galindo succession was worth securing to an heir of the true faith.
They stirred about it, obtained advice at the English Embassy; and hence
that letter to the lawyers, calling upon Sir Hubert to relinquish title
and property, and to refund what money he had expended. He was vehement
in his opposition to this claim. He could not bear to think of his
brother having married a foreigner—a papist, a fisherman’s daughter;
nay, of his having become a papist himself. He was in despair at the
thought of his ancestral property going to the issue of such a marriage.
He fought tooth and nail, making enemies of his relations, and losing
almost all his own private property; for he would go on against the
lawyer’s advice, long after every one was convinced except himself and
his wife. At last he was conquered. He gave up his living in gloomy
despair. He would have changed his name if he could, so desirous was he
to obliterate all tie between himself and the mongrel papist baronet and
his Italian mother, and all the succession of children and nurses who
came to take possession of the Hall soon after Mr. Hubert Galindo’s
departure, stayed there one winter, and then flitted back to Naples with
gladness and delight. Mr. and Mrs. Hubert Galindo lived in London. He
had obtained a curacy somewhere in the city. They would have been
thankful now if Mr. Mark Gibson had renewed his offer. No one could
accuse him of mercenary motives if he had done so. Because he did not
come forward, as they wished, they brought his silence up as a
justification of what they had previously attributed to him. I don’t
know what Miss Galindo thought herself; but Lady Ludlow has told me how
she shrank from hearing her parents abuse him. Lady Ludlow supposed that
he was aware that they were living in London. His father must have known
the fact, and it was curious if he had never named it to his son.
Besides, the name was very uncommon; and it was unlikely that it should
never come across him, in the advertisements of charity sermons which the
new and rather eloquent curate of Saint Mark’s East was asked to preach.
All this time Lady Ludlow never lost sight of them, for Miss Galindo’s
sake. And when the father and mother died, it was my lady who upheld
Miss Galindo in her determination not to apply for any provision to her
cousin, the Italian baronet, but rather to live upon the hundred a-year
which had been settled on her mother and the children of his son Hubert’s
marriage by the old grandfather, Sir Lawrence.
Mr. Mark Gibson had risen to some eminence as a barrister on the Northern
Circuit, but had died unmarried in the lifetime of his father, a victim
(so people said) to intemperance. Doctor Trevor, the physician who had
been called in to Mr. Gray and Harry Gregson, had married a sister of
his. And that was all my lady knew about the Gibson family. But who was
Bessy?
That mystery and secret came out, too, in process of time. Miss Galindo
had been to Warwick, some years before I arrived at Hanbury, on some kind
of business or shopping, which can only be transacted in a county town.
There was an old Westmoreland connection between her and Mrs. Trevor,
though I believe the latter was too young to have been made aware of her
brother’s offer to Miss Galindo at the time when it took place; and such
affairs, if they are unsuccessful, are seldom spoken about in the
gentleman’s family afterwards. But the Gibsons and Galindos had been
county neighbours too long for the connection not to be kept up between
two members settled far away from their early homes. Miss Galindo always
desired her parcels to be sent to Dr. Trevor’s, when she went to Warwick
for shopping purchases. If she were going any journey, and the coach did
not come through Warwick as soon as she arrived (in my lady’s coach or
otherwise) from Hanbury, she went to Doctor Trevor’s to wait. She was as
much expected to sit down to the household meals as if she had been one
of the family: and in after-years it was Mrs. Trevor who managed her
repository business for her.
So, on the day I spoke of, she had gone to Doctor Trevor’s to rest, and
possibly to dine. The post in those times, came in at all hours of the
morning: and Doctor Trevor’s letters had not arrived until after his
departure on his morning round. Miss Galindo was sitting down to dinner
with Mrs. Trevor and her seven children, when the Doctor came in. He was
flurried and uncomfortable, and hurried the children away as soon as he
decently could. Then (rather feeling Miss Galindo’s presence an
advantage, both as a present restraint on the violence of his wife’s
grief, and as a consoler when he was absent on his afternoon round), he
told Mrs. Trevor of her brother’s death. He had been taken ill on
circuit, and had hurried back to his chambers in London only to die. She
cried terribly; but Doctor Trevor said afterwards, he never noticed that
Miss Galindo cared much about it one way or another. She helped him to
soothe his wife, promised to stay with her all the afternoon instead of
returning to Hanbury, and afterwards offered to remain with her while the
Doctor went to attend the funeral. When they heard of the old love-story
between the dead man and Miss Galindo,—brought up by mutual friends in
Westmoreland, in the review which we are all inclined to take of the
events of a man’s life when he comes to die,—they tried to remember Miss
Galindo’s speeches and ways of going on during this visit. She was a
little pale, a little silent; her eyes were sometimes swollen, and her
nose red; but she was at an age when such appearances are generally
attributed to a bad cold in the head, rather than to any more sentimental
reason. They felt towards her as towards an old friend, a kindly,
useful, eccentric old maid. She did not expect more, or wish them to
remember that she might once have had other hopes, and more youthful
feelings. Doctor Trevor thanked her very warmly for staying with his
wife, when he returned home from London (where the funeral had taken
place). He begged Miss Galindo to stay with them, when the children were
gone to bed, and she was preparing to leave the husband and wife by
themselves. He told her and his wife many particulars—then paused—then
went on—“And Mark has left a child—a little girl—
“But he never was married!” exclaimed Mrs. Trevor.
“A little girl,” continued her husband, “whose mother, I conclude, is
dead. At any rate, the child was in possession of his chambers; she and
an old nurse, who seemed to have the charge of everything, and has
cheated poor Mark, I should fancy, not a little.”
“But the child!” asked Mrs. Trevor, still almost breathless with
astonishment. “How do you know it is his?”
“The nurse told me it was, with great appearance of indignation at my
doubting it. I asked the little thing her name, and all I could get was
‘Bessy!’ and a cry of ‘Me wants papa!’ The nurse said the mother was
dead, and she knew no more about it than that Mr. Gibson had engaged her
to take care of the little girl, calling it his child. One or two of his
lawyer friends, whom I met with at the funeral, told me they were aware
of the existence of the child.”
“What is to be done with her?” asked Mrs. Gibson.
“Nay, I don’t know,” replied he. “Mark has hardly left assets enough to
pay his debts, and your father is not inclined to come forward.”
That night, as Doctor Trevor sat in his study, after his wife had gone to
bed, Miss Galindo knocked at his door. She and he had a long
conversation. The result was that he accompanied Miss Galindo up to town
the next day; that they took possession of the little Bessy, and she was
brought down, and placed at nurse at a farm in the country near Warwick,
Miss Galindo undertaking to pay one-half of the expense, and to furnish
her with clothes, and Dr. Trevor undertaking that the remaining half
should be furnished by the Gibson family, or by himself in their default.
Miss Galindo was not fond of children; and I dare say she dreaded taking
this child to live with her for more reasons than one. My Lady Ludlow
could not endure any mention of illegitimate children. It was a
principle of hers that society ought to ignore them. And I believe Miss
Galindo had always agreed with her until now, when the thing came home to
her womanly heart. Still she shrank from having this child of some
strange woman under her roof. She went over to see it from time to time;
she worked at its clothes long after every one thought she was in bed;
and, when the time came for Bessy to be sent to school, Miss Galindo
laboured away more diligently than ever, in order to pay the increased
expense. For the Gibson family had, at first, paid their part of the
compact, but with unwillingness and grudging hearts; then they had left
it off altogether, and it fell hard on Dr. Trevor with his twelve
children; and, latterly, Miss Galindo had taken upon herself almost all
the burden. One can hardly live and labour, and plan and make
sacrifices, for any human creature, without learning to love it. And
Bessy loved Miss Galindo, too, for all the poor girl’s scanty pleasures
came from her, and Miss Galindo had always a kind word, and, latterly,
many a kind caress, for Mark Gibson’s child; whereas, if she went to Dr.
Trevor’s for her holiday, she was overlooked and neglected in that
bustling family, who seemed to think that if she had comfortable board
and lodging under their roof, it was enough.
I am sure, now, that Miss Galindo had often longed to have Bessy to live
with her; but, as long as she could pay for her being at school, she did
not like to take so bold a step as bringing her home, knowing what the
effect of the consequent explanation would be on my lady. And as the
girl was now more than seventeen, and past the age when young ladies are
usually kept at school, and as there was no great demand for governesses
in those days, and as Bessy had never been taught any trade by which to
earn her own living, why I don’t exactly see what could have been done
but for Miss Galindo to bring her to her own home in Hanbury. For,
although the child had grown up lately, in a kind of unexpected manner,
into a young woman, Miss Galindo might have kept her at school for a year
longer, if she could have afforded it; but this was impossible when she
became Mr. Horner’s clerk, and relinquished all the payment of her
repository work; and perhaps, after all, she was not sorry to be
compelled to take the step she was longing for. At any rate, Bessy came
to live with Miss Galindo, in a very few weeks from the time when Captain
James set Miss Galindo free to superintend her own domestic economy
again.
For a long time, I knew nothing about this new inhabitant of Hanbury. My
lady never mentioned her in any way. This was in accordance with Lady
Ludlow’s well-known principles. She neither saw nor heard, nor was in
any way cognisant of the existence of those who had no legal right to
exist at all. If Miss Galindo had hoped to have an exception made in
Bessy’s favour, she was mistaken. My lady sent a note inviting Miss
Galindo herself to tea one evening, about a month after Bessy came; but
Miss Galindo “had a cold and could not come.” The next time she was
invited, she “had an engagement at home”—a step nearer to the absolute
truth. And the third time, she “had a young friend staying with her whom
she was unable to leave.” My lady accepted every excuse as bona fide,
and took no further notice. I missed Miss Galindo very much; we all did;
for, in the days when she was clerk, she was sure to come in and find the
opportunity of saying something amusing to some of us before she went
away. And I, as an invalid, or perhaps from natural tendency, was
particularly fond of little bits of village gossip. There was no Mr.
Horner—he even had come in, now and then, with formal, stately pieces of
intelligence—and there was no Miss Galindo in these days. I missed her
much. And so did my lady, I am sure. Behind all her quiet, sedate
manner, I am certain her heart ached sometimes for a few words from Miss
Galindo, who seemed to have absented herself altogether from the Hall now
Bessy was come.
Captain James might be very sensible, and all that; but not even my lady
could call him a substitute for the old familiar friends. He was a
thorough sailor, as sailors were in those days—swore a good deal, drank
a good deal (without its ever affecting him in the least), and was very
prompt and kind-hearted in all his actions; but he was not accustomed to
women, as my lady once said, and would judge in all things for himself.
My lady had expected, I think, to find some one who would take his
notions on the management of her estate from her ladyship’s own self; but
he spoke as if he were responsible for the good management of the whole,
and must, consequently, be allowed full liberty of action. He had been
too long in command over men at sea to like to be directed by a woman in
anything he undertook, even though that woman was my lady. I suppose
this was the common-sense my lady spoke of; but when common-sense goes
against us, I don’t think we value it quite so much as we ought to do.
Lady Ludlow was proud of her personal superintendence of her own
estate. She liked to tell us how her father used to take her with him
in his rides, and bid her observe this and that, and on no account
to allow such and such things to be done. But I have heard that the
first time she told all this to Captain James, he told her point-blank
that he had heard from Mr. Smithson that the farms were much neglected
and the rents sadly behindhand, and that he meant to set to in good
earnest and study agriculture, and see how he could remedy the state
of things. My lady would, I am sure, be greatly surprised, but what
could she do? Here was the very man she had chosen herself, setting to
with all his energy to conquer the defect of ignorance, which was all
that those who had presumed to offer her ladyship advice had ever had
to say against him. Captain James read Arthur Young’s “Tours” in all
his spare time, as long as he was an invalid; and shook his head at my
lady’s accounts as to how the land had been cropped or left fallow from
time immemorial. Then he set to, and tried too many new experiments at
once. My lady looked on in dignified silence; but all the farmers and
tenants were in an uproar, and prophesied a hundred failures. Perhaps
fifty did occur; they were only half as many as Lady Ludlow had feared;
but they were twice as many, four, eight times as many as the captain
had anticipated. His openly-expressed disappointment made him popular
again. The rough country people could not have understood silent and
dignified regret at the failure of his plans, but they sympathized
with a man who swore at his ill success—sympathized, even while they
chuckled over his discomfiture. Mr. Brooke, the retired tradesman, did
not cease blaming him for not succeeding, and for swearing. “But what
could you expect from a sailor?” Mr. Brooke asked, even in my lady’s
hearing; though he might have known Captain James was my lady’s own
personal choice, from the old friendship Mr. Urian had always shown for
him. I think it was this speech of the Birmingham baker’s that made
my lady determine to stand by Captain James, and encourage him to try
again. For she would not allow that her choice had been an unwise one,
at the bidding (as it were) of a dissenting tradesman; the only person
in the neighbourhood, too, who had flaunted about in coloured clothes,
when all the world was in mourning for my lady’s only son.
Captain James would have thrown the agency up at once, if my lady had not
felt herself bound to justify the wisdom of her choice, by urging him to
stay. He was much touched by her confidence in him, and swore a great
oath, that the next year he would make the land such as it had never been
before for produce. It was not my lady’s way to repeat anything she had
heard, especially to another person’s disadvantage. So I don’t think she
ever told Captain James of Mr. Brooke’s speech about a sailor’s being
likely to mismanage the property; and the captain was too anxious to
succeed in this, the second year of his trial, to be above going to the
flourishing, shrewd Mr. Brooke, and asking for his advice as to the best
method of working the estate. I dare say, if Miss Galindo had been as
intimate as formerly at the Hall, we should all of us have heard of this
new acquaintance of the agent’s long before we did. As it was, I am sure
my lady never dreamed that the captain, who held opinions that were even
more Church and King than her own, could ever have made friends with a
Baptist baker from Birmingham, even to serve her ladyship’s own interests
in the most loyal manner.
We heard of it first from Mr. Gray, who came now often to see my lady,
for neither he nor she could forget the solemn tie which the fact of
his being the person to acquaint her with my lord’s death had created
between them. For true and holy words spoken at that time, though
having no reference to aught below the solemn subjects of life and
death, had made her withdraw her opposition to Mr. Gray’s wish about
establishing a village school. She had sighed a little, it is true,
and was even yet more apprehensive than hopeful as to the result; but
almost as if as a memorial to my lord, she had allowed a kind of rough
school-house to be built on the green, just by the church; and had
gently used the power she undoubtedly had, in expressing her strong
wish that the boys might only be taught to read and write, and the
first four rules of arithmetic; while the girls were only to learn to
read, and to add up in their heads, and the rest of the time to work
at mending their own clothes, knitting stockings and spinning. My lady
presented the school with more spinning-wheels than there were girls,
and requested that there might be a rule that they should have spun so
many hanks of flax, and knitted so many pairs of stockings, before they
ever were taught to read at all. After all, it was but making the best
of a bad job with my poor lady—but life was not what it had been to
her. I remember well the day that Mr. Gray pulled some delicately fine
yarn (and I was a good judge of those things) out of his pocket, and
laid it and a capital pair of knitted stockings before my lady, as the
first-fruits, so to say, of his school. I recollect seeing her put on
her spectacles, and carefully examine both productions. Then she passed
them to me.
“This is well, Mr. Gray. I am much pleased. You are fortunate in your
schoolmistress. She has had both proper knowledge of womanly things and
much patience. Who is she? One out of our village?”
“My lady,” said Mr. Gray, stammering and colouring in his old fashion,
“Miss Bessy is so very kind as to teach all those sorts of things—Miss
Bessy, and Miss Galindo, sometimes.”
My lady looked at him over her spectacles: but she only repeated the
words “Miss Bessy,” and paused, as if trying to remember who such a
person could be; and he, if he had then intended to say more, was quelled
by her manner, and dropped the subject. He went on to say, that he had
thought it his duty to decline the subscription to his school offered by
Mr. Brooke, because he was a Dissenter; that he (Mr. Gray) feared that
Captain James, through whom Mr. Brooke’s offer of money had been made,
was offended at his refusing to accept it from a man who held heterodox
opinions; nay, whom Mr. Gray suspected of being infected by Dodwell’s
heresy.
“I think there must be some mistake,” said my lady, “or I have
misunderstood you. Captain James would never be sufficiently with a
schismatic to be employed by that man Brooke in distributing his
charities. I should have doubted, until now, if Captain James knew him.”
“Indeed, my lady, he not only knows him, but is intimate with him, I
regret to say. I have repeatedly seen the captain and Mr. Brooke walking
together; going through the fields together; and people do say—”
My lady looked up in interrogation at Mr. Gray’s pause.
“I disapprove of gossip, and it may be untrue; but people do say that
Captain James is very attentive to Miss Brooke.”
“Impossible!” said my lady, indignantly. “Captain James is a loyal and
religious man. I beg your pardon Mr. Gray, but it is impossible.”