“Reckon I have; three grannies, I told you.”
“Whom?”
“I’ll tell you. As I was trying to make out Allworth Abbey, what do I do but fall over an old servant, half-sailor, half-valet, who caught me trespassing on private grounds, and hauled me up before his master, like a vagrant before a magistrate; and when I told my story, who does the old gent turn up to be but my own granny, who was living in that fine house the Anchorage, with two other old ladies, also my grannies.”
“The Anchorage; then you must speak of Sir Ira Brunton and his family?” said Eudora in astonishment.
“Just. He quarrelled with my mother and father, and cast them off, but he took me in when he found me dragged over his threshold. Shall I tell you all the particulars? Would it interest you?”
“Very much, indeed,” said Eudora, forgetting for the moment her own awful situation in her interest in Annella’s fortunes.
The girl began and related her adventures as they are already known to the reader.
The narrative won the prisoner from the contemplation of her own sorrows, and at its close she put out her hand and took that of Annella, saying:
“I am very glad for your sake, dear.”
“But I am not,” exclaimed Annella, recurring to her cause of grief and remorse. “I had rather remained in London, and have met all that I most dreaded—the union, a vulgar task-mistress, beggary, anything, rather than have come down here to betray you. But I did not mean it, Eudora; oh, indeed I did not! I would have died rather than have brought you to this. But I did not even suspect your identity until I recognized you in the court-room, and even then I did not know that I had had any hand in your arrest until I got home that evening, and Tabitha Tabs, the lady’s-maid, told me it was all my doings; that it was from my talk that they had gained the clue to your hiding-place; and oh, Eudora, I felt that she was telling the truth, and I felt as if I had been knocked down with a club, and I have been ill ever since. If I had been well, do you think I would have stayed away from you so long?”