“But she had no right to be jealous, vindictive, cruel,” urged Miss Merriman. “After all, her cousin had a right to marry, and she was provided for, for she had a little money of her own. But she was a perfect monster of avarice, and when my baby was born and she knew that he would have her cousin’s property she became so outrageously rude and harsh to me that I could not and would not bear it.”
“Did my uncle allow it?” asked Bayre, wondering whether the strange degeneration in his uncle had begun some time back.
“He didn’t see all of it,” said she. “Miss Ford was very artful, and she assumed to me when we were by ourselves an overbearing tone which she never used in your uncle’s presence. When I told him about this, and protested, he professed that I was exaggerating, making mountains out of mole-hills. And as my influence over him, such as it was, dwindled away directly we got back into the neighbourhood of this old cousin, you may imagine how all these scenes ended. He gradually took her part more and more, and blamed me for the uncomfortable life we all led. You see this Miss Ford had been his housekeeper for many years, and she was a very clever woman. Did you never see her?”
“Never. She died, you know, last year, before I ever went to Creux.”
“Ah, yes, yes!”
“Now that was just after you ran away, wasn’t it? When she was dead why didn’t you go back to your husband and child?” asked Bayre, gently.
“I wanted to, oh, I wanted to,” cried poor “Miss Merriman,” down whose cheeks the tears were again falling. “I should never have run away but for her.”
“How did it happen?” asked Bayre. “Will you tell me? I don’t ask out of curiosity, of course, but in the hope that I may be able to do something. Perhaps I could patch up this quarrel—not by myself, for my uncle can’t bear the sight of me, but through Miss Eden.”
“Ah! Miss Eden! What is she like?”
“You’ve never seen her?”