“Very little, my dear. Only the years of my earliest childhood were passed here. Old Zillah was an object of terror to me. Partly, perhaps, because she wore a man’s coat over her skirt, and a man’s hat on her head, and partly because she had the reputation of being a wise woman or a witch. She never came to the castle, and I never saw her except by chance, when I went with my nursery governess to walk or ride. She never came near me or spoke to me. I think I should have gone into fits if she had.”
“How old were you then, mamma?” she inquired.
“I do not know when I first began to hear of Old Zillah, or when I first saw her. She was the shadow and the terror of my dawn of life. I was but four years old when I lost my mother, and then my father left this place, taking me with him; and he went to his estate in Ireland—Weirdwaste, on the west coast.”
“‘Weirdwaste!’ What a name! Did you live long at Weirdwaste, mamma, dear?”
“Yes, many years alone there with my governess. My father was traveling on the continent.”
“What sort of a place was it, mamma?” inquired Wynnette. And Rosemary and Elva drew their chairs nearer to the sofa on which their mother sat to hear her answer.
“It was an old manor house on the inland end of a long, flat, dreary point of land stretching into the Atlantic Ocean. At high tide the entire cape, to within a few rods of the manor wall, was covered by the sea, and day and night the swash of the sea was heard.”
“How lonely you must have been, mamma, with no one but your governess and the servants,” said Elva. “But perhaps you had neighbors,” she added.
“No; no neighbors at all. There was no one within miles of us but the poorest Irish peasants, who were tenants of my father. The estate was vast in extent of territory, but poor in soil. The land steward lived in the manor house, to take care of it and of me. They kept two old servants—a man and a woman—an old horse, and older jaunting car. That is how I lived at Weirdwaste.”
“Oh! what a lonely life! How long did you live there, mamma?”