"They are so kind to me, lady!--and I owe it all to you."
Mary Ursula sat down by the couch. Late though it was when she went to rest, she had been unable to sleep, and had got up with one of the bad headaches to which she was occasionally subject. The strange disclosure made to her by Walter Dance, added to other matters, had troubled her brain and kept her awake. While saying to herself that so disgraceful an aspersion on the Castlemaines was worse than unjustifiable, outrageously improbable, some latent fear in her heart kept suggesting the idea--what if it should be true! With the broad light of day, she had intended to throw it quite to the winds--but she found that she could not. The anxiety was tormenting her.
"Walter," she began in a low tone, after cheerily talking a little with him about his injuries, "I want to speak to you of what you disclosed to me last night. When I got up this morning I thought in truth I had dreamt it--that it could not be true."
"Dreamt what?" he asked.
"About the smuggling," she whispered. "And about what you said, reflecting on my uncle. You are more collected this morning; tell me what is truth and what is not."
"I must have talked a deal of nonsense last night, ma'am," spoke the young man after a pause, as he turned his uneasy face to the wall--for uneasy it was growing. "I'm sure I can't remember it a bit."
She told him what he did say.
"What a fool I must have been! 'Twas the pain, lady, made me fancy it. Smugglers in the Friar's Keep! Well, that is good!"
"Do you mean to say it is not true?" she cried eagerly.
"Not a word on't, ma'am. I had a fever once, when I was a little 'un--I talked a rare lot o' nonsense then. Enough to set the place afire, grandmother said."