"It has been a trying time, sir. I shall be glad of a rest."
But Sir Denzil was gazing at him with something of the fixity of Charles Eager's look before they left the Rectory. He took a thoughtful pinch of snuff, with a sudden relapse into his old manner. Then he nodded his head slowly several times, and said, "No . . . I think not . . . No need--now. . . ." And he looked across at Eager and said: "It occurred to me that if he went down and saw that old woman . . . but it is not necessary now. Nothing she could say----"
"I would like to see her, by your leave, sir," said Jim. "After all, she was good to us boys, in her own way, you know."
"Very well," said Sir Denzil, after a moment's hesitation, as though he shrunk from subjecting his new-found satisfaction to any test whatever. "Only--remember! Her whole life has been a lie, and we cannot trust a word she says." And they went downstairs, and along the stone passage, to the side-room in which Nance Lee's baby had slept his first sleep at Carne, that black night one-and-twenty years before.
"Yon other woman will have told her," said Sir Denzil, stopping short of the door as the thought struck him.
"No; I told her not to," said Eager.
"Ah!"--with a quick look at him--"then you had the same idea." And they went quietly in.
Mrs. Lee was lying motionless on her back, and her thin gray face in its frilled white nightcap looked so set and rigid that at first they thought her dead.
Sir Denzil nodded to Eager to speak to her, and stepped back out of sight.
"Mrs. Lee," said Eager, bending over her, "here is one of our boys come back from death. He wished to see you."