“Thank you,” she said, but still she hesitated. She could not tell him of that terrible night with Montague upon the moors. At last, with an effort, “I had an unpleasant adventure,” she said. “I was lost in a fog. A little blind girl from a farm near by called Tetherstones found me, and took me home with her. I was ill after that, and they nursed me.”
“They?” queried the Bishop.
“The Dermots,” she said.
“Ah!” said the Bishop.
He sat for a space lost in thought, his eyes still fixed upon her.
“Tell me about them!” he said at length. “Of what does the family now consist?”
She told him, and he listened with close attention.
“What is the father like?” he asked then.
“He is an invalid,” she said. “The son works the farm, and the girls all help. The mother spends most of her time looking after the old man.”
“Is he very old?” asked the Bishop.