She helped her to rise, and made her sit down again in an easy-chair, and then herself withdrew a little, and stood leaning against the window looking at her.
"He has done more good in Broxton than any other man who lives," she said. "He has made it what it is. The people who hate him and speak ill of him are those he has benefited most. It is the way of their class, I have heard before, and now I believe it to be true. They have said worse things of men who deserve them as little as he does. He has enemies whom he has conquered, and they will never forgive him."
She discovered a good many things to say, having once begun, and she actually found a kind of epicurean enjoyment in saying them in a manner the most telling. She always liked to do a thing very well.
But, notwithstanding this, the time seemed rather long before she was left alone to think the matter over.
Before she had said many words her visitor was another woman. Life's color came back to her, and she sat crying softly, tears of sheer joy and relief.
"I knowed it couldn't be true," she said. "I knowed it, an' oh! thank you, ma'am, with all a mother's heart!
"To think," she said, smiling and sobbing, "as I should have been so wicked as to let it weigh on me, when I knowed so well as it couldn't never be. I should be almost 'shamed to look him in the face if I didn't know how good he was, an' how ready he'd be to forgive me."
When at last she was gone, Miss Ffrench threw herself into the chair she had left, rather languidly. She was positively tired.
As she did so she heard a sound. She rose hastily and turned toward the folding-doors leading into the adjoining room. They had been partially closed, and as she turned they were pushed aside and some one came through them.
It was Jem Haworth.