This made Bassett very uneasy. “Confound it, he will turn you away. He will say, 'This girl knows too much.'”
“How simple you be!” said the girl. “D'ye think I let him know? Says he, 'I think I have seen you before.' 'Yes, sir,' says I, 'I was housemaid here before my lady had me to dress her.' 'No,' says he, 'I mean in London—in Mayfair, you know.' I declare you might ha' knocked me down wi' a feather. So I looks in his face, as cool as marble, and I said, 'No, sir; I never had the luck to see London, sir,' says I. 'All the better for you,' says he; and he swallowed it like spring water, as sister Rhoda used to say when she told one and they believed it.”
“You are a clever girl,” said Bassett. “He would have turned you out of the house if he had known who you were.”
She disappointed him in one thing; she was bad at answering questions. Morally she was not quite so great an egotist as himself, but intellectually a greater. Her volubility was all egotism. She could scarcely say ten words, except about herself. So, when Bassett questioned her about Sir Charles and Lady Bassett, she said “Yes,” or “No,” or “I don't know,” and was off at a tangent to her own sayings and doings.
Bassett, however, by great patience and tact, extracted from her at last that Sir Charles and Lady Bassett were both sore at not having children, and that Lady Bassett bore the blame.
“That is a good joke,” said he. “The smoke-dried rake! Polly, you might do me a good turn. You have got her ear; open her eyes for me. What might not happen?” His eyes shone fiendishly.
The young woman shook her head. “Me meddle between man and wife! I'm too fond of my place.”
“Ah, you don't love me as I love you. You think only of yourself.”
“And what do you think of? Do you love me well enough to find me a better place, if you get me turned out of Huntercombe Hall?”
“Yes, I will; a much better.”