Just then a young crescent moon showed its face, a bank of clouds swept away to the left, and Jasper could distinctly see the square outline of an ugly house. She saw something else also—the very white face of the hungry Sylvia, the look which was almost starvation in her eyes. Jasper was clever; she might not be highly educated in the ordinary sense, but she had been taught to use her brains, and she had excellent brains to use. Now, as she looked at the girl, an idea flashed through her mind.
“For some extraordinary reason that child is downright hungry,” she said to herself. “Now, nothing would suit my purpose better.”
She came close to Sylvia and laid her hand on her arm.
“I have taken a great fancy to you, miss,” she said.
“Have you?” answered Sylvia.
“Yes, miss; and I am very lonely, and I don’t mean to stay far away from my dear young lady.”
“Are you going to live in the village?” asked Sylvia.
“I have a room now at the ‘Green Man,’ Miss Leeson, but I don’t mean to stay there; I don’t care for the landlady. And I don’t want to be, so to speak, under her ladyship’s nose. Her ladyship has took a mortal hatred to me, and as the village, so to speak, belongs to the Castle, if the Castle was to inform the ‘Green Man’ that my absence was more to be desired than my company, why, out I’d have to go. You can understand that, can you not, miss?”
“Yes—of course.”
“And it is the way with all the houses round here,” continued Jasper; “they are all under the thumb of the Castle—under the thumb of her ladyship—and I cannot possibly stay near my dear young lady unless——”