A cloud slowly gathered over David’s face, and he turned to her with an almost troubled surprise. “Thee has seen these things—and how?”
“One day—thee was in Devon—one of the women was taken ill. They sent for me because the woman asked it. She was a Papist; but she begged that I should go with her to the hospital, as there was no time to send to Heddington for a nurse. She had seen me once in the house of the toll-gate keeper. Ill as she was, I could have laughed, for, as we went in the Earl’s carriage to the hospital-thirty miles it was—she said she felt at home with me, my dress being so like a nun’s. It was then I saw the Cloistered House within and learned what was afoot.”
“In the Earl’s carriage indeed—and the Earl?”
“He was in Ireland, burrowing among those tarnished baubles, his titles, and stripping the Irish Peter to clothe the English Paul.”
“He means to make Hamley his home? From Ireland these furnishings come?”
“So it seems. Henceforth the Cloistered House will have its doors flung wide. London and all the folk of Parliament will flutter along the dunes of Hamley.”
“Then the bailiff will sit yonder within a year, for he is but a starved Irish peer.”
“He lives to-day as though he would be rich tomorrow. He bids for fame and fortune, Davy.”
“‘Tis as though a shirtless man should wear a broadcloth coat over a cotton vest.”
“The world sees only the broadcloth coat. For the rest—”