"The servants!" cried the woman, with a laugh: "there are no servants there. The house is shut up. Half the servants are discharged; and the rest are gone with the old General and his nieces to London. But I will tell you where to find them. He has a house in a place they call Green-street though it is as brown as all the rest of the den. Go there, and ask for them, and you will find some of them, at least."
"Do you mean that Mr. Tracy has a house in Green-street?" asked Chandos. "Or are you still speaking of the General?"
"Of the General, to be sure," replied the woman. "It is a small, narrow house, fit for a solitary man. I was there once, and the old soldier, his servant, was kind to me, because I talked to him of Northferry, and the places round. He is not a bad man, General Tracy, as men go--better than most; and I think he will keep his word with the boy, whatever be his concern for his brother."
"You may be quite certain he will," replied her companion. "General Tracy is a man of honour, and never breaks his word."
"What! not to a woman?" demanded Sally Stanley, with a mocking laugh. "Well, go up to him, and see. Put him in mind of the boy; and tell him for me, that mice sometimes help lions, as the old fable-book says that I read at school. Then come down to me this day fortnight; and perhaps I may tell you more--I do not say that I will--I do not say that I can; but yet I have seen more unlikely things. Do you know anything of your brother?"
"Nothing," replied Chandos, "but that he has gone to the continent--whither, I know not."
"He has taken a bad heart and a heavy conscience with him," said the woman. "But you must learn where he has gone; for some day you will have to claim your own at his hands. He will not always triumph in his wickedness. A day of retribution will come."
"I trust he is not so wicked as you seem to think," answered Chandos Winslow; "and, at all events, I pray, if he have done wrong, as doubtless he has in some things, that repentance rather than retribution may reach him."
"If he has done wrong!" cried the woman, vehemently. "Chandos Winslow, do you not know that there is upon him a load of crime that may well weigh him down to perdition? I know not what you saw on that dark fifth of February; but there were those who saw you with a dead man's head upon your arm, mourning over him--there were those who saw that dead man walking alive with your own brother five minutes before; and fierce were the looks and sharp the words between them. Our people never go into your courts to bear witness for or against you; but there were words spoken and overheard that night which would have taken the charge from you and placed it where it ought to be, had those words been told again before the judge. There were words spoken which shall not be forgotten, and which may yet rise up and bear fruit that he wots not of."
Chandos Winslow laid his hand gently on her arm. "Vengeance," he said, "is a terrible passion. It is possible my brother may have injured you in times long past. I think it must be so, from much that you have said. But if so, I beseech you, seek not in anyway to injure him; for in so doing, you would but render yourself more wretched than you tell me you are. You too may have done wrong--you too may have brought unhappiness on others. Forgive, if you would be forgiven. I think I know you now; and if I do, it explains much that was doubtful regarding one for whom and for whose wrongs I have deeply grieved, believing her dead full eight years ago. My brother has, I have reason to believe, wronged me too; but if he has, I have forgiven him; and you may see that it is so when you recollect that even to save my own life I would not endanger his."