"I have come here to ask you to help me in my search for my wife, Hester," Edward Arundel said, in a scarcely audible voice.
It is not given to the bravest mind to be utterly independent and defiant of the body; and the soldier was beginning to feel that he had very nearly run the length of his tether, and must soon submit himself to be prostrated by sheer physical weakness.
"Your wife!" cried Hester eagerly. "O sir, is that true?"
"Is what true?"
"That poor Miss Mary was your lawful wedded wife?"
"She was," replied Edward Arundel sternly, "my true and lawful wife. What else should she have been, Mrs. Jobson?"
The farmer's daughter burst into tears.
"O sir," she said, sobbing violently as she spoke,––"O sir, the things that was said against that poor dear in this place and all about the Towers! The things that was said! It makes my heart bleed to think of them; it makes my heart ready to break when I think what my poor sweet young lady must have suffered. And it set me against you, sir; and I thought you was a bad and cruel–hearted man!"
"What did they say?" cried Edward. "What did they dare to say against her or against me?"
"They said that you had enticed her away from her home, sir, and that––that––there had been no marriage; and that you had deluded that poor innocent dear to run away with you; and that you'd deserted her afterwards, and the railway accident had come upon you as a punishment like; and that Mrs. Marchmont had found poor Miss Mary all alone at a country inn, and had brought her back to the Towers."