The Master of Greylands: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

But Ethel hesitated: it was not a thing to be told to Miss; Castlemaine. She stammered an incoherent word or two between her sobs, and at the best was indistinct.

"I understand, Ethel. Be calm. John Bent has been making a terrible charge against my Uncle James."

Ethel clung to her. She admitted that it was so: telling how she had unintentionally overheard the private conversation between the landlord and his wife. She said it had frightened and confused her, though she did not believe it.

"Neither do I believe it," returned Miss Castlemaine calmly. "I heard this some time ago--I mean the suspicion that is rife in Greylands--but I am sorry that you should have been startled with it. That my uncle is incapable of anything of the kind--and only to have to say as much in refutation seems a cruel insult on him--I am perfectly sure of; and I am content to wait the elucidation that no doubt time will bring."

"Bat how wicked of John Bent!" cried Ethel.

"Ethel, dear, I have gone through so much misery of late that it has subdued me, and I think I have learnt the great precept not to judge another," said Mary Ursula sadly. "I do not blame John Bent. I respect him. That a strange mystery does encompass the doings of that February night--so fatal for me as well as for poor Anthony--I cannot ignore: and I speak not now of the disappearance only. There's reason in what John Bent says--that Mr. Castlemaine is not open about it, that it might be fancied he knows more than he will say. It is so. Perhaps he will not speak because it might implicate some one--not himself, Ethel; never himself; I do not fear that."

"No, no," murmured Ethel.

"It is Mr. Castlemaine's pride, I think, that prevents his speaking. He must have heard these rumours, and naturally resents them----"

"Do you think Anthony is really dead?" interrupted Ethel.

"I have never had any hope from the first that he is not. Now and then my imagination runs away with me and suggests he may be here, he may be there, he may have done this or done that--but of real hope, that he is alive, I have none. Next to the death of my dear father, it has been the greatest weight I have had to bear. I saw him but once, Ethel, but I seemed to take to him as to a brother. I am sure he was honourable and generous, a good man and a gentleman."