“And how did every one receive this amazing news? What did they say to it?” demanded Mr. Usher, in a sharp legal key.
“Oh, bedad, Mary laughed at it for pure nonsense. She was a country girl born and bred. To be an English countess with a castle and servants, and to wear a gold crown on her head, would just kill her, if it was true; but it was only a fairy tale, and she was her mammy’s daughter, and no one else——”
“What did the priest say?”
“Faix, his reverence give it against Mrs. Foley, too! Anyhow, she was too late; twenty-wan years had passed, and there was no call to go and upset a grand English family, and maybe for nothing. Katty, ye see, had no proof beyond her bare word; no papers, no witnesses. Every one jeered at Mrs. Foley’s queer notion, and treated the story as an elegant fine joke. Mary is no Englisher, and there’s not a lighter foot to dance a jig, or a better warrant to sing an old Irish lament, in all the country.”
“And is that the end of it? Eh?” said the lawyer briskly.
“’Tis in a way; howsomever, Katty still whinges and whimpers and moans, begging and praying them to make restitution—sometimes beating on the walls with her two bare hands, and crying by the hour; she can’t stir now, having lost the use of herself; and her legs being crippled with rheumatism, she sits in her chair all day. Whiles, she’s reasonable enough; but about Mary she is properly mad. She says she’s no child of hers—and calls her Lady Mary. Ye see the head of Katty is not right, and her own mother went the same way, so people just humours her; they are all very good to the poor crazy creature, she being a sort of ‘innocent’ in her old age.”
“I suppose they never imagine there is any foundation for her delusion,” inquired Mr. Usher.
“No; and if there was they’d hold Mary Foley hard and fast, and keep her, I believe, against all the lords in England; for she is one of themselves.”
“And what do you think yourself?”
Mike made no immediate reply, but took one or two loud sucks at his pipe. At last he said: “I believe, on me solemn oath, that there is something in the story all the same.”