“Your mother’s name, then, was Isopel?”
“Isopel Berners.”
“But had you never a father?”
“Yes, I had a father,” said the girl, sighing, “but I don’t bear his name.”
“Is it the fashion, then, in your country for children to bear their mother’s name?”
“If you ask such questions, young man, I shall be angry with you. I have told you my name, and whether my father’s or mother’s, I am not ashamed of it.”
“It is a noble name.”
“There you are right, young man. The chaplain in the great house, where I was born, told me it was a noble name; it was odd enough, he said, that the only three noble names in the county were to be found in the great house; mine was one; the other two were Devereux and Bohun.”
“What do you mean by the great house?”
“The workhouse.”