The lady's colour changed a little.
'Wellwood?' she repeated; 'that name was very familiar to me once. I knew a captain—latterly he was colonel—Wellwood, who left the Army, and went to reside near Invermay in Scotland. Perhaps he was a relation?'
'He was my dear father,' replied Mary, in a broken voice.
'Indeed—your father! He was my dearest friend.'
How very dear he had been to her once, the old lady did not say then; but thereby hung a tale!
'Your face seemed strangely familiar to me,' she said, while regarding Mary with tender interest, and patting her hand as she held it between her two. 'Your father is dead?'
'And mamma too, otherwise I might not have been reduced to accept the occupation in which you found me.'
'This is sad—very sad!' said Mrs. Deroubigne, her eyes suffusing as she spoke. 'Your father, I repeat, was the dearest friend of my girlhood—how long, long it seems ago now—my dear girl, I might have been your mother, and for his sake I should like to act as one to you now.'
Mary's heart went forth to the speaker, and then she thought of Ellinor. The words of Mrs. Deroubigne came as a kind of revelation to her; she had heard a rumour of some old and early love affair of her father's, which had led to the bitter family quarrel referred to in the first chapters of our story.
'And you knew mamma?' asked Mary, wistfully.