'Did you have much difficulty in finding the place?'
'Oh yes. She had taken care to hide herself well.' And his face slowly contracted with a lowering and brutal expression. 'She thought I shouldn't find them up here. But I swore I would, and when I swear a thing it's as good as done.'
'I hope you found your wife and daughter looking well.'
'Oh, they're well enough, of course; trust them to get fat and flourishing, while their husband and father may be starving!'
Now this was laughable; for whatever defects Mr. Ellmer's appearance might have, the leanness of starvation was not one of them.
'They were by no means fat and flourishing when I first met them, I assure you,' I said gravely.
The brute turned his eyes on me with slow and sullen ferocity.
'That was not my fault, sir,' he whispered with affected humility, being evidently far too stupid to know how his looks belied his words. 'They had been away from me for some time; my wife left me because I was unable to support her in luxury, the depression in art being very great at this moment, sir. She took my child away from me to teach her to hate her own father, and to bring her up in her own extravagant notions.'
'She has cured herself of those now,' I said; 'she lives on the barest sum necessary to keep two people alive. It is, unfortunately, all I can spare her for her kindness in taking care of my cottage.'
This was true. I had often regretted that the poor lady's inflexible independence had made her refuse to accept more than enough for her and her daughter, with the strictest economy, to live upon. Now, I rejoiced to think that she had absolutely no savings to be sucked down into the greedy maw of the creature before me. My words were evidently the echo to some statement that had been already made to him. Naturally, he believed neither his wife nor me.