‘Thank you, my lord, and Master Michael,’ she uttered, but she was evidently preoccupied with what she had to tell Miss Morton. ‘Oh’m, there was such a nasty man here! And he wanted me, and said he was my father, but he wasn’t. He was the same man that gave Master Mite and me the bull’s-eyes when we were naughty and Louisa went away.’
‘Are you sure, Cea?’ both exclaimed, but to the child of six the very eagerness of the question brought a certain confusion, and though more gently Lord Northmoor asked her to describe him, she could not do it, and indeed she had been only five when the encounter had taken place. The urgency of the inquiry somehow seemed to dispose her to cry, as if she thought she had been naughty, and she had to be dismissed to the cowslip ball.
‘If the child is right, that man cannot be her father at all,’ said Lord Northmoor. ‘That man’s name is Rattler, and he is well known at Westhaven.’
‘Should you know him?’
‘I never saw him, but I could soon find those who have done so.’
‘If we could only prove it! Oh, what a relief it would be! I dare not even send the child to school—as I meant to do, Northmoor, for indeed we don’t spoil her—for fear she should be kidnapped; and I don’t know if the school-board officer won’t be after her, and I can’t give as a reason “for fear she should be stolen by her father.”‘
‘Not exactly. It ought to be settled once for all. Perhaps the child will tell more when you have her alone.’
‘Is not Rattler only too like a nickname, or is he a native of Westhaven?’
This Lord Northmoor thought he could find out, but the dinner was hardly over before a message came that the man Jones had called again.
‘Perhaps I had better see him alone,’ said the guest, and Bertha was only too glad to accept the offer, so he proceeded to the little room opening into the hall, where interviews with tradesfolk or petitioners were held.