"Mother," said Mary Swan the younger, "the gentleman won't care to know about, about all that between you and father."
"Ah, but it is just what I do care to know."
"But, sir, father perhaps mightn't choose it." The obedience of women to men—to those men to whom they are legally bound—is, I think, the most remarkable trait in human nature. Nothing equals it but the instinctive loyalty of a dog. Of course we hear of gray mares, and of garments worn by the wrong persons. Xanthippe doubtless did live, and the character from time to time is repeated; but the rule, I think, is as I have said.
"Mrs. Swan," said Mr. Prendergast, "I should think myself dishonest were I to worm your secrets out of you, seeing that you are yourself so truthful and so respectable." Perhaps it may be thought that Mr. Prendergast was a little late in looking at the matter in this light. "But it behoves me to learn much of the early history of your husband, who is now living with you here, and whose name, as I take it, is not Swan, but Mollett. Your maiden name probably was Swan?"
"But I was honestly married, sir, in the parish church at Putney, and that young woman was honestly born."
"I am quite sure of it. I have never doubted it. But as I was saying, I have come here for information about your husband, and I do not like to ask you questions off your guard,"—oh, Mr. Prendergast!—"and therefore I think it right to tell you, that neither I nor those for whom I am concerned have any wish to bear more heavily than we can help upon your husband, if he will only come forward with willingness to do that which we can make him do either willingly or unwillingly."
"But what was it about Abraham's letter, sir?"
"Well, it does not so much signify now."
"It was he sent you here, was it, sir? How has he learned where we are, Mary?" and the poor woman turned to her daughter. "The truth is, sir, he has never known anything of us for these twenty years; nor we of him. I have not set eyes on him for more than twenty years,—not that I know of. And he never knew me by any other name than Swan, and when he was a child he took me for his aunt."
"He hasn't known then that you and his father were husband and wife?"