"He's been ill—I think he's had an accident—but I don't rightly know what's been the matter with him. Mr. Brooke, sir, I hope you'll believe me in what I say. When I came here first I didn't know that you were friends with his sister and his brother, or I wouldn't have come near the place. And when I found it out I'd got fond of Miss Lesley, and thought it would be no harm to stay."
"But what—what on earth—made you take a situation as ladies'-maid at all?" cried Caspar, pulling his beard in his perplexity, as he listened to her story.
"I wanted to earn money. He could not work—and I could not bear to see him want."
"Could not work? Was it not a matter of the will? He could have worked if he had wished to work," said Mr. Brooke, rather sternly. "That Francis Trent should let his wife go out as——"
"Oh, well, it was work I was used to," said Francis Trent's wife, patiently. "I'd been in service when I was a girl, and knew something about it. And it was honest work. There's plenty of ways of earning money which are worse than being a servant in your house, and to Miss Lesley, too."
Lesley's words came back to Caspar's mind. She had had "faith" in Kingston's attachment, and her faith seemed now to be justified. Women's instincts, as Caspar acknowledged to himself, are in some ways certainly juster than those of men.
"Is he not strong? Is there no sort of work that he can do?" he demanded, with asperity. "If you had come to me at the beginning and told me who you were, I might have found something for him. It is not right that his wife should be waiting upon my daughter. Tell me what he can do."
"I don't think he can do much now," was Mary Trent's answer. "He's very much broken down. I daresay you wouldn't know him if you saw him. I don't think he could do a day's work, so there's all the more reason that I should work for both."
She spoke truly enough as regarded the present; but, by a suppression of the truth which was almost heroic she concealed the fact that for many years Francis had been able but unwilling to work. Now, certainly, he was incapacitated, and she spoke as if he had been an invalid for years. Thus Caspar Brooke understood her, and his next words were uttered in a gentler tone.
"I am very sorry that you should have been brought into these straits, Mrs. Trent. Will you give me your address, and let me think over the matter? Mrs. Romaine or Mr. Oliver Trent——"