"They'd no business to marry her to Mr. Tempest," continued Mitty, shaking her head, "and she, poor thing, idolizing that black Lord Fane, as was her first cousin. It wasn't likely, after that, she'd settle to Mr. Tempest, who was as light as tow. It was against nature. She never took a bit of interest in him, nor him in her neither, that I could see. A hard man he was, too—a hard man. She sent for him when she was dying. She would not see him while there was any chance. 'Forgive me,' she says; she says it over and over, me holding her up. 'I wouldn't ask it if I was staying, but I'm doing the best I can by dying. It's not much to make up, but it's the best I can. And,' she says, 'don't think, Jack, as all women are bad like me. There's a many good ones as 'ull make you happy yet when I'm gone.' I can see him now, standing by her, looking past her out of the window with his face like a flint. 'I've known two false ones,' he says; and he went away without another word. And she says after a bit to me, 'I've always been frightened at the very thought of dying, but it's living I'm frightened of now.' Eh! Master John, your poor mammy! She did repent. And Mr. Tempest sent for me to the library after the funeral, and he says, 'Promise me, nurse, that you'll never repeat what your mistress said to me when she was not herself.' And he looked hard at me, and I promised. And I've never breathed it to any living soul, not to one I haven't, from that day to this."
"I found it out three weeks ago," said John. "And as I am not Mr. Tempest's son, everything I have belongs by right to Colonel Tempest, the next heir, not to me. Overleigh is not mine. It never was mine."
But Mitty could not be made to understand what his mother's frailty had to do with John. When at last she grasped the idea that John would make known the fact that he was not his father's son, she was simply incredulous that her lamb could do such a thing—could bring shame upon his own mother. No, whatever else he might do, he would never do that. Why, Mrs. Alcock would know; and friends as she was with Mrs. Alcock, and had been for years, such a word had never passed her lips. And the people in the village, and the trades-people, and Jones and Evans from York, who were putting up the new curtains,—everybody would know. Mitty became quite agitated. Surely, surely, he'd never tell against his poor mother in her grave.
"Mitty," said John, forcing himself to repeat what it had been difficult enough to say once, "don't you see that I can't stay here and keep what is not mine? Nothing is mine if I am not Mr. Tempest's son. I ought never to have been called so. We must go away."
But Mitty was perplexed.
"Not to that great weary house in London," she said anxiously, "with every spot of water to carry up from the bottom?"
"That is not mine either," said John in despair, rising to his feet and standing before her. "Oh, Mitty, try and understand. Nothing is mine—nothing, nothing, nothing; not even the clothes I have on. I am a beggar."
Mitty looked at him in a dazed way. She could not understand, but she could believe. Her chin began to tremble.
It was almost a relief to see at last the tears which he had dreaded from the first. "My lamb a beggar," she said over and over again; and she cried a little, but not much. Mitty was getting old, and she was not able to realize a change—a change so incomprehensible as this.
"But we need not be unhappy," said John, kneeling down by her, and putting his arms round her. "We shall be together still. Wherever I go you will go with me. I don't know yet where it will be, but we shall have a little home together somewhere, just you and I; and you'll do my socks and handkerchiefs, won't you, Mitty? and"—John controlled his voice, but he hid his face in her lap that she might not see it—"we'll be so happy together." At the moment I think John would have given up heaven itself to make that hour smooth to Mitty. "And your cakes, Mitty," he went on hoarsely. "They are better than any one else's. You shall have a little kitchen, and you will make the cakes yourself, won't you? and the"—his voice stumbled heavily—"the rock buns."