“Well, my lady, all the story depends upon that. The gentleman in question did set the bones; but he set them across, you see,—as it might be so.” And Miss Nares arranged four pieces of whalebone on the table in the shape of a long, narrow letter X; there could not have been a better exemplification. “The consequence was, my lady, that the poor girl’s hand was found, when she had got well, to be turned completely round: and, in fact, it is all but useless.”
“When her hands are in her lap,” observed Miss Flint, “the palm of the right lies uppermost. Ugh!”
“When she beckons the children with that hand,” observed Miss Nares, “they think she means them to go further off. A girl who has to earn her bread, my lady! It is in everybody’s mouth, I assure you.”
“What has become of the girl?” asked Lady Hunter.
“Oh, she was got rid of—sent away—to save the credit of the gentleman in the corner-house. But these things will come out, my lady. You are aware that the Russell Taylors have for some time been employing Mr Foster, from Blickley?”
“Ah, true! I had heard of that.”
With unrelaxed gravity, Lady Hunter returned to her equipage, carrying with her Miss Nares’s newest cap and story.
As the carriage drew near the corner-house, the driver, as if sympathising with his lady’s thoughts, made his horses go their very slowest. Lady Hunter raised herself, and leaned forward, that she might see what she could see in this dangerous abode. The spring evening sunshine was streaming in at the garden window at the back of the house; so that the party in the room was perfectly visible, in the thorough light, to any one who could surmount the obstacle of the blind. Lady Hunter saw four people sitting at dinner, and somebody was waiting on them. She could scarcely have told what it was that surprised her; but she exclaimed to Sir William—
“Good heavens! they are at dinner!”
Sir William called out angrily to the coachman to drive faster, and asked whether he meant to keep everybody out till midnight.