'My lamb,' said Mrs. Curnow gently, 'doan't 'ee take on so, doan't 'ee now.'
'Poor Simone,' said Marion in a strangled voice as she wrestled for composure, 'and left in a gutter to die! And that hard life! And she would have been so happy at Garth.'
Simone's low voice here broke in; Simone had grown curiously still. One would have said she was a detached spectator of affairs that concerned other people.
'Why did you do it, Victoire?'
Victoire's mouth tightened to a still harder line.
'Why did you do it?' repeated Simone. 'Were you not well treated as my nurse?'
'I can tell you that,' said Sampson. 'Victoire wanted the estates for her own child.'
Simone turned round in her chair.
'What estates, M. le Colonel? It is all quite clear to me now—my memory, I mean. My father told me when he was very ill, just before he died, that I was to go to England with Victoire and live with a very dear friend of his until I was grown up. He said nothing of estates. In fact, I always thought we were poor. But then, I was only a child of eight.'
'Your mother inherited lands from her father's family, my dear. Your grandfather's direct heir died. You are the inheritor of his estate. Victoire knew that.'