'Really, really, my dear lady, I—'
'Bishop, tell me what she said about my sister. I will know.'
Reluctantly the bishop spoke out at this direct request. 'She said that your sister had eloped in London with a man who afterwards refused to marry her, that she had a child, and that such child is your niece, Miss Arden, whom you brought to Beorminster after the death of your unhappy sister.'
'A fine mixture of truth and fiction indeed,' said the old lady, in a haughty voice. 'I am obliged to Mrs Pansey for the way in which she has distorted facts.'
'I fear, indeed, that Mrs Pansey exaggerates,' said Dr Pendle, shaking his head.
'With all due respect, bishop, she is a wicked old Sapphira!' cried Miss Whichello, and forthwith produced a bundle of papers out of her pocket. 'My unfortunate sister Annie did run away, but she was married to her lover on the very day she left our house in London, and my darling Mab is as legitimate as your son George, Dr Pendle.'
The bishop winced at this unlucky illustration. 'Have you a proof of this marriage, Miss Whichello?' he asked, with a glance at the papers.
'Of course I have,' she replied, untying the red tape with trembling fingers. 'Here is the certificate of marriage which my poor Annie gave me on her dying bed. I would have shown it before to all Beorminster had I known of Mrs Pansey's false reports. Look at it, bishop.' She thrust it into his hand. 'Ann Whichello, spinster; Pharaoh Bosvile, bachelor. They were married in St Chad's Church, Hampstead, in the month of December 1869. Here is Mab's certificate of birth; she was christened in the same church, and born in 1870, the year of the Franco-German war, so as this is ninety-seven, she is now twenty-seven years of age, just two years older than your son, Captain Pendle.'
With much interest the bishop examined the two certificates of birth and marriage which Miss Whichello placed before him. They were both legally perfect, and he saw plainly that however badly Bosvile might have behaved afterwards to Ann Bosvile she was undoubtedly his wife.
'Not that he would have married her if he could have helped it,' went on Miss Whichello, while the bishop looked at the documents, 'but Annie had a little money—not much—which she was to receive on her wedding day, so the wretch married her and wrote to my dear father for the money, which, of course, under grandfather's will, had to be paid. Father never would see Annie again, but when the poor darling wrote to me a year afterwards that she was dying with a little child by her side, what could I do but go and comfort her? Ah, poor darling Annie!' sobbed the little old lady, 'she was sadly changed from the bright, beautiful girl I remembered. Her husband turned out a brute and a ruffian and a spendthrift. He wasted all her money, and left her within six months of the marriage—the wretch! Annie tried to support herself by needlework, but she took cold in her starving condition and broke down. Then Mab was born, and she wrote to me. I went at once, bishop, but arrived just in time to get those papers and close my dear Annie's eyes. Afterwards I brought Mab back with me to Beorminster, but I kept her for some time in London on account of my father. When I did bring her here, and I showed him the marriage certificate, he got quite fond of the little pet. So all these years Mab has lived with me quite like my own sweet child, and your son is a lucky man to win her love,' added the old maid, rather incoherently. 'It is not everyone that I would give my dear Annie's child to, I can tell you, bishop. So that's the whole story, and a sadly common one it is.'