“Oh! assuredly, sir,” exclaimed Mrs. Mortimer, glad of an opportunity to escape from the house; and Mr. Vernon, with constrained courtesy, hastened to open the door to afford her egress.
The old woman breathed more freely when she was once more outside the walls of the cottage; for the sudden advent of the young maiden’s father had not a little embarrassed, even if it had not altogether discomfited her.
But no sooner was she in the open air, when she began to ask herself a thousand questions as she retraced her way up the lane.
What meant the mystery which evidently hung around the present occupant of the cottage?—wherefore did that charming creature dwell there alone?—why was her father only a visitor, instead of being a resident at his daughter’s abode?—and for what aim, or through what motive, was so fair a flower buried in such seclusion?
That Agnes was indeed the pure, innocent, artless creature which she appeared to be, the old crone was sure. Too well acquainted with the world was Mrs. Mortimer not to perceive that the ingenuous naïveté of the young girl was real and natural, and not artificial and assumed. For an instant the impure imagination of the wretch had suggested that Miss Vernon might only be the pensioned mistress of some wealthy individual; but in another moment that hypothesis was altogether discarded. No: Agnes was not tainted with even the slightest—faintest shade of immorality: her mind was innocence itself—and her chastity as unblemished as the driven snow. Even the old woman, whose life had been so tremendously dissolute, was compelled to embrace this conviction; but the very experience which she herself had gained in the sphere of licentiousness, dissimulation, and guile, helped Mrs. Mortimer to arrive at that unquestionable conclusion.
Who and what, then, was Agnes Vernon;—who and what was her father?
Mrs. Mortimer was a person having an eye to her own individual advantage in every circumstance which, coming under her cognisance, seemed to present a chance of affording scope for her selfish, interested, sinister interference. Wherever a mystery appeared, there she beheld an opportunity for her officious meddling: this officious meddling led to the discovery of secrets and to the eliciting of revelations:—and the information thus gleaned became a sort of marketable commodity with Mrs. Mortimer. In a word, she would seek to gain the confidence of those who had matters of importance to communicate, so that she might subsequently render herself so useful as to deserve payment, or at all events acquire the position of one who could exact a good price for her secresy respecting the things so imprudently entrusted to her.
Calculations in accordance with this disposition on her part, and having reference to the cottage which she had just left, were passing in her mind as she sped along the lane,—when, midway in that narrow thoroughfare, she was overtaken by some one who had hurried after her, but whose footsteps she had not heard, in the pre-occupation of her thoughts, until they were close behind her.
She stepped—turned round—and beheld, by the bright starlight, a tall young gentleman, apparently handsome so far as she could distinguish his features, and dressed in an elegant style.
“Pardon me, my good woman,” said he, “for addressing you; but observing that you came from the cottage yonder——”