"Soa—thoo art Stephen Fountain's dowter—art tha?"
"Yes—and you have seen me before," was the girl's quiet reply.
She said to herself that her cousin had the eyes of a bird of prey. So black and fierce they were, in the greyish white face under the shaggy hair. But she was not afraid. Rather she felt her own temper rising.
"How long is't sen your feyther deed?"
"Nine months. But you knew that, I think—because I wrote it you."
Mrs. Mason's heavy lids blinked a moment, then she said with slowly quickening emphasis, like one mounting to a crisis:
"Wat art tha doin' wi' Bannisdale Hall? What call has thy feyther's dowter to be visitin onder Alan Helbeck's roof?"
Laura's open mouth showed first wonderment, then laughter.
"Oh! I see," she said impatiently—"you don't seem to understand. But of course you remember that my father married Miss Helbeck for his second wife?"
"Aye, an she cam oot fra amang them," exclaimed Mrs. Mason; "she put away from her the accursed thing!"