Mr. Daw looked at Molly doubtingly. "Governess to Chattaway's children?" he mechanically repeated.
Molly nodded. She was growing quite at home with her guest. "Miss Maude has had the best of educations, they say: plays and sings wonderful; and so they made her the governess."
"But has she no fortune—no income?" reiterated the stranger, lost in wonder.
"Not a penny-piece," returned Molly, decisively. "Her and Mr. Rupert haven't a halfpenny between 'em of their own. He's clerk, or something of that sort, at Chattaway's coal mine, down yonder."
"But they were the heirs to the estate," the stranger persisted. "Their father was son and heir to Squire Trevlyn, and they are his children! How is it? How can it be?"
The words were spoken in the light of a remark. Mr. Daw was evidently debating the question with himself. Molly thought the question was put to her.
"I don't know the rights of it, sir," was all she could answer. "All I can tell you is, the Chattaways have come in for it, and the inheritance is theirs. But there's many a one round about here calls Mr. Rupert the heir to this day, and will call him so, in spite of Chattaway."
"He is the heir—he is the heir!" reiterated Mr. Daw. "I can prove——"
Again came that break in his discourse which had occurred before. Molly resumed.
"Master will be able to tell you better than me, sir, why the property should have went from Master Rupert to Chattaway. It was him that buried the old Squire, sir, and he was at the Hold after, and heard the Squire's will read. Nora told me once that he, the parson, cried shame upon it when he came away. But she was in a passion with Chattaway when she said it, so perhaps it wasn't true. I asked my missis about it one day that we was folding clothes together, but she said she knew nothing about it. She wasn't married then."