"Then you were twenty-three when you came to us?"
"Yes, sir."
"We were poor at the time, and were living in common lodgings in London?"
"That is so, sir."
"My father's means were so straitened, if my memory does not betray me, that every shilling of our income had to be reckoned. You did not--excuse me for the question, Mrs. Fortress--you did not serve my parents for love?"
"No, sir; it was purely a matter of business between your father and me."
"You are--again I beg you to excuse me--not the kind of person to work for nothing, or even for small wages."
"Your father paid me liberally, sir."
"And yet we were so poor that until we came suddenly and unexpectedly into a fortune, my father could never afford to give me a shilling. Truly your duties must have been no ordinary ones that you should have been engaged under such circumstances. It is, I suppose, useless for me to ask for an explanation of the nature of those duties?"
"Quite useless, sir."