‘Really,’ said Lady Merrifield, ‘I can’t help thinking there’s a good deal of excuse for her.’
‘What? That poor Maurice’s wife was half a heathen, and afterwards the girl was left to chance?’ said Colonel Mohun. ‘I see no other. And you, Lily, are the last person I should expect to excuse untruth.’
‘I did not mean to do that, Regie; but you all say that poor Mary was fond of this man and helped him.’
‘That she did!’ said Lord Rotherwood, ‘and very much against the grain it went with Maurice.’
‘Then don’t you see that this poor child, who probably never had the matter explained to her, may have felt it a great hardship to be cut off from the man her mother taught her to care for; and that may have led her into concealments?’
‘Well!’ said Colonel Mohun, ‘at that rate, at least one may be thankful never to have married.’
‘One—or two, Regie?’ said Jane, as they all laughed at his sally. ‘I think I had better go up and see whether I can get anything out of the child. Do you mean to have her down to dinner, Lily,’ she added, glancing at the clock.
‘Oh yes, certainly. I don’t want to put her to disgrace before all the children and servants—that is, if she is not crying herself out of condition to appear, poor child.’
‘Not she,’ said Uncle Reginald.
On opening the door, the children were all discovered in the hall, in anxious curiosity, not venturing in uncalled, but very much puzzled.