"It is your old nurse, Patience," Lady Dashwood explained. "She was sitting with me tonight when Slight came over hot-foot with the news. Patience has one of her lucid moods tonight. And Patience knows everything. The secret is hers, too."
"I am tired of this mystery," Mary said; "why is Patience Ray hiding there?"
A thin, bent figure emerged from the bushes; a dark withered face in a frame of thin grey hair looked out. It was an old woman, toothless and haggard, yet the eyes were sharp and shrewd now. For some years past the aged creature had been suffering from decay, but there were moments when her wit was as sharp and shrewd as ever.
"I couldn't stay away, dearie," the thin piping voice said. "It was like a mercy that God gave me back my mind tonight. The wicked old woman may do a lot of good before she dies yet. Don't you do it, dearie. Tell him that the proper owner is coming back to Dashwood, and that your face is your only dowry. Because I've seen the heir, as I knew that I should do before I die."
"What is she talking about?" Mary asked in utter astonishment. "Patience, explain yourself."
But the old woman shook her head and refused to say any more. She muttered to herself something about disgrace and the house of Dashwood.
"Smoke the rats out!" she cried shrilly and suddenly, "smoke them out! It is the only way to clear Dashwood of such vermin. Put the match to the faggot and burn them out. That's what I would do if I had my way. And to think that it should come to this after all these years. Mistress, mistress, what a couple of wicked old women we are."
"We are that," Lady Dashwood said mournfully. She did not chide the wild speaker's words as Mary had expected. "Our sin is going to find us out, Patience. Mary, I implore you to do what I ask you. I implore you to spare me the pain of a full confession. Send the man about his business and have none of him."
There was passionate entreaty in Lady Dashwood's tone, so that Mary was troubled in more ways than one. The heart pulled her one way, pride and reason another. And behind it all was a haunting sense that something was terribly wrong here. There was some dreadful meaning underlying the wild words of old Patience. As Mary stood there, cold and dispassionate in the moonlight, Horace Mayfield emerged with a telegram form in his hand.
"I have been some little time," he explained, "the forms were mislaid. But what is the meaning of this, Miss Mary? Surely it is late for Lady Dashwood to be abroad."