“Only me, sir? Why, it was everybody: and, what was worst of all, my poor mistress knew it, and fretted over it to her dying day.”
“But you never heard Mr. Fausset acknowledge the parentage?”
“No, sir, not to me; but I have no doubt he acknowledged it to his poor dear lady. He was an affectionate husband, and he must have been very much wrapped up in that girl, or he wouldn’t have made his wife unhappy about her.”
With but the slightest encouragement from Mr. Greswold, Bell expatiated on the subject of Fay’s residence in the two houses, and the misery she had wrought there. She unconsciously exaggerated the general conviction about the master’s relationship to his protégée, nor did she hint that it was she who first mooted the notion in the Parchment Street household. She left George Greswold with the belief that this relationship had been known for a fact to a great many people—that the tie between protector and protected was an open secret.
She dwelt much upon the child Mildred’s love for the elder girl, which she seemed to think in itself an evidence of their sisterhood. She gave a graphic account of Mildred’s illness, and described how Fay had watched beside her bed night after night.
“I saw her sitting there in her nightgown many a time when I went in the middle of the night to see if Mildred was asleep. I never liked Miss Fay, but justice is justice, and I must say, looking back upon all things,” said Mrs. Bell, with a virtuous air, “that there was no deception about her love for Miss Mildred. I may have thought it put on then; but looking back upon it now, I know that it was real.”
“I can quite understand that my wife must have been very fond of such a companion—sister or no sister—but she was so young that no doubt she soon forgot her friend. Memory is not tenacious at seven years old,” said Greswold, with an air of quiet thoughtfulness, cutting the leaves of a new book which had lain on his desk, the paper-knife marking the page where he had thrown it down yesterday afternoon.
“Indeed, she didn’t forget, sir. You must not judge Miss Mildred by other girls of seven. She was—she was like Miss Lola, sir”—Bell’s elderly voice faltered here. “She was all love and thoughtfulness. She doted on Miss Fay, and I never saw such grief as she felt when she came back from the sea-side and found her gone. It was done for the best, and it was the only thing my mistress could do with any regard for her own self-respect; but even I felt very sorry Miss Fay had been sent away, when I saw what a blow it was to Miss Mildred. She didn’t get over it for years; and though she was a good and dutiful daughter, I know that she and her mother had words about Miss Fay more than once.”
“She was very fond of her, was she?” murmured George Greswold, in an absent way, steadily cutting the leaves of his book. “Very fond of her. And you have no doubt in your own mind, Mrs. Bell, that the two were sisters?”
“Not the least doubt, sir. I never had,” answered Bell resolutely.