Just for one delusive instant, the impulse to take this grand and sweet and kindly lady into her confidence; to say to her I am trying to trace out my poor husband's fate; swayed Charlotte Guise. The next, she remembered that it must not be; that she was Miss Castlemaine, the niece of that great enemy.
"You are only too good and kind," she rejoined in a sad, faint tone. "I wish I could; I should ask nothing better: but there are some of our burthens we must bear alone."
"Are you quite comfortable at Greylands' Rest?" asked Mary Ursula, unable to repress the suspicion that Mrs. Castlemaine's temper or her young daughter's insolence might be rendering the governess's place a trying one.
"Yes--pretty well. That is, I should be," she hastily added, speaking on the impulse of the moment, "if I were quite sure the house was an honest one."
"The house an honest one!" echoed Mary Ursula in undisguised astonishment, a haughty flush dying her face. "What do you mean?"
"Ah, pardon me, madam!--It may be that I mistake terms--I am not English. I did not mean to say it was a thief's house."
"But what do you mean?"
Madame Guise looked full at the questioner. She spoke after a short consideration, dropping her voice to a half whisper.
"I would like to know--to feel sure--that Mr. Castlemaine did not do anything with that poor young man, his nephew."
Mary Ursula sat half confounded--the rejoinder was so very unexpected, the subject so entirely disagreeable.