The old servant shook his gray locks slowly and sadly, and then answered:
“Ah, my dear master! in that case, I fear, you would have to punish the dead, and I scarcely believe that you would do that if you could, or could do it if you would.”
“What do you mean, old man?”
“Ah, sir, you might almost guess. The report started with that poor, mad woman’s fancies about you having married her daughter.”
Alexander sprang from his chair, struck his forehead, and then sinking into his seat again, murmured:
“I might have foreseen this; I ought to have foreseen it when I humored and almost encouraged the poor creature in her illusions. But how did this get out?”
“Well, sir, it was in this way: her church friends came to see her, and she babbled to them about your fancied marriage with her daughter, which, of course, none of them believed. If you remember, sir, in speaking of the poor woman’s death, I told you she died easy and not too soon, for that she had grown more and more foolish every day. It seemed heartless to say so, sir, but indeed it was true; for from babbling of your marriage with her daughter, she got to babbling about your wronging of her daughter, in the very worst way a gentleman could wrong a young woman.”
“Good heavens! was ever such a fatal calamity?” cried Alexander, starting up and pacing the room in great excitement. “Oh, my child! my child! my lamb! my dove! my dear, dear Drusilla! Go on, old man! go on! what next?”
“Sir, they to whom she babbled believed this last lie, and took it into their addled heads that the mother’s madness was caused by the daughter’s ruin, and went and reported as they believed.”
“Who were they?”