“Well, sir, I don’t wish to say anything against the dead, and Mr. Fausset was a liberal master to me, and I make no doubt that he died a penitent man. He was a regular church-goer, and an upright man in all his ways while I lived with him; but right is right; and I shall always maintain that it was a cruel thing to a young wife like Mrs. Fausset, who doted on the ground he walked upon, to bring his natural daughter into the house.”
“Mrs. Bell, do you know that this is a serious accusation you are bringing against a dead man?” said George Greswold solemnly. “Now, what grounds have you for saying that this girl”—with his hand upon the photograph—“was Mr. Fausset’s daughter?”
“What grounds, sir? I don’t want any grounds. I’m not a lawyer to put things in that way; but I know what I know. First and foremost, she was the image of him; and next, why did he bring her home and want her to be made one of the family, and treated as a sister by Miss Mildred?”
“She may have been the daughter of a friend.”
“People don’t do that kind of thing—don’t run the risk of making a wife miserable to oblige a friend,” retorted Bell scornfully. “Besides, I say again, if she wasn’t his own flesh and blood, why was she so like him?”
“She may have been the daughter of a near relation.”
“He had but one near relation in the world: his only sister, a young lady who was so difficult to please that she refused no end of good offers, and of such a pious turn that she has devoted her life to doing good for the last five-and-twenty years, to my certain knowledge. I hope, sir, you would not insinuate that she had a natural daughter?”
“She may have made a secret marriage, perhaps, known only to her brother.”
“She couldn’t have done any such thing without my knowledge, sir. She was a girl at school at the time of Miss Fay’s birth. Don’t mix Miss Fausset up in it, pray, sir.”
“Was it you only who suspected Mr. Fausset to be Miss Fay’s father?”