FOOTNOTE:
[1] Empty.
CHAPTER X: OLD LETTERS
Next day after dinner, when Aunt Jael had settled down for her doze, Grandmother called me upstairs to her bedroom, pulled out an old brown tin box from under the bed, unlocked it, and drew forth a large brown paper packet. We sat down, and she told me my mother's story.
"Your father belonged to a different class from us, my dear, quite to the gentlefolk of the county. Your mother met him at his cousin's, Lord Tawborough's, when she was governess there.
"This Lord Tawborough died a few years ago. The boy who now bears that name is a lad of maybe seventeen or eighteen, who I expect knows nothing about it at all, although he was very fond of your mother when she taught him as a little boy."
"Shall I ever see him?"
"No, my dear, no. You are in a different walk of life. Young squires don't come to visit us. Not that his father ever had any false pride; I know he was always very kind to me. He came to Rachel's funeral, and never had his cousin—your father, that is—inside his house after the trouble. He wanted to help us too in educating you, but I said No. I would not touch money belonging in any way to him, though I've forgiven him long ago, as I trust the Lord has. He thought I was too independent, but maybe he understood all the same. I've heard that the young boy is as good-hearted as his father. He lives at the family house over near Torribridge; he's just going up to Oxford, I believe, like his father, or maybe 'tis Cambridge—"