“Know her? I’ve known her from childhood. Poor little thing! So this is what became of her!” said Dick, in a voice of great pain, as he dropped dejectedly into his seat again.
“How look here, you know; none of that! Don’t you be gettin’ up any interest in her; because, you see, I’ve made up my own mind that way. And when Lyon marries I mean to take the pretty cottage and the pretty girl both off his hands,” drawled Harpe, very drowsily, for he was in the last stage of intoxication, and almost asleep.
“You can so well afford that sort of thing, with your lieutenant’s pay!” laughed “nameless.”
“Who is this girl, Dick, since you know her?” inquired Reding.
“She is as pure and good a girl as lives in this world. And, gentlemen, if she is at Cedarwood, as you say, under Alick’s protection, my life and soul on it, she is his wife, or she believes herself to be such!” said Dick, earnestly and almost angrily, as if he challenged even the thoughts of men if they wronged the friendless girl.
No one seemed disposed to contradict him in words, no matter how much they may have differed from him in opinion.
“But who is she then, Hammond?” persisted Captain Reding, who never, if he could help it, left a point unsettled.
“Drusilla Sterling, a clergyman’s orphan; brought up in Alexander Lyon’s family; a protegée of his mother, a pet of his father. Little less than a year ago she disappeared from her home, and could never be traced by her friends. So she is with him, the hypocritical scoundrel! But she is his wife, or thinks herself so! My life and soul on it, she does, for she could not fall—she could not. I have known her from her earliest childhood—the sweetest child that ever lived—a little saint!”
“But are you sure she is the same with Alick’s girl?” inquired Reding.
“I fear there is no doubt of it. The coincidence of name and circumstance is so complete. I can’t think why I didn’t recognize her when you first mentioned her; though in truth I never heard her called Drusa, but Drusilla; and I never thought of her as a woman, but merely as a child, and most certainly couldn’t associate her memory with any thoughts of license, but always with the most sacred sanctities of home.”