"Stay, Maude, let me try again. It strikes me that she might hear some words if she chose." And putting her lips close to the old woman's ear, she deliberately uttered, "Twenty pounds."
"Eh! What? What?" cried the dame with a start.
"Twenty pounds," repeated Maude, in the other ear.
"Do ye say twenty pounds, young miss?"
"Yes, twenty pounds to anyone who can give information about a bureau that was carried away as old lumber from the Moat House some years ago. A piece of furniture something like that, I should think?" added Maude, suddenly pointing with her riding whip to a dark-looking shattered bureau or secretaire, standing in a recess by the side of the old woman's bedstead.
"Eh, what? Like that?" she cried in alarm. "It's my own, my very own. What will Hodge say? Do they want my furniture, every bit my own?"
"No," said Maude, "but to give twenty pounds to anyone who can tell what became of ours."
"I'm not a thief, I'm not," whimpered she, rocking herself in her chair, and recovering from stone deafness with wonderful rapidity.
"Of course not. We did not say you are a thief; we only tell you about the twenty pounds for anyone who can find our old bureau, and we want you to tell your neighbours."
"I will, indeed, miss, I will. Twenty pounds, did you say, if I tell—if I hear of it? Twenty golden guineas should I get?" Again she was assured of the fact, and the young visitors had scarcely departed when the priest entered the cottage. The old woman rose with a curtsey, the door was closed, and he and his aged daughter had a long interview.