At the end of his letter, he begged to send his kind regards to Miss Moffat. That was all. No sentence about Bayview, no reference to the places both of them knew so well. To Miss Moffat it was rather a new feeling that of being left out in the cold, and she did not like it.
Mr. Riley’s letter, however, supplied her with food for reflection besides that enumerated.
Hitherto Grace had merely known vaguely that Mr. Brady was an undesirable acquaintance, a man fond of driving hard bargains, of overreaching his neighbours if he could; a man of whom his wife stood in dread, of whom the world had nothing to tell which redounded to his credit, but now all these sins and shortcomings were italicized in her mind, and a dread of some great evil befalling Nettie in consequence of the information she had given began to haunt her night and day.
She was totally in the power of this man whom the people vilified; whose effigy they had carried through the streets, and buried with every act of contumely they could devise. She was, though in her own country, friendless, penniless, helpless.
She had dared much in order to save those who, though her own relatives, formerly discarded her; and this very courage and forgetfulness of wrongs in a great extremity helped to recommend Nettie more tenderly than ever to her old friend.
What could she do to make matters better for her? Even in the solitude of her own chamber, Grace blushed and winced to think all she could offer any one was money; but still believing the day might come when Nettie would need it, she sat down and wrote her a long touching letter, saying how hurt she felt to hear of some recent events just come to her knowledge; how she dreaded lest evil might arise out of past circumstances, to which she need not refer more particularly; how she begged and implored her if evil did arise to come at once to England and the writer. In a postscript Grace added that, lest she should at any time want money on a sudden emergency, she enclosed sufficient to meet whatever exigency might arise.
This letter she enclosed in one to Mr. Hanlon, begging him to give it into the hands of the person to whom it was addressed.
As she did so, Grace could not help smiling, and yet sighing at the memory of her Pharisaism when first Nettie devised this mode of communication.
“Ah! I did not know so much then as I do now,” thought Miss Moffat, speaking mentally, as is the habit of young ladies of small experience and limited worldly knowledge, as if she were about seventy years of age.
To this letter, after some delay, came an answer.