“Born abroad?” she said, suddenly opening her eyes.
“I think so—at least—but, indeed, I can tell you very little about myself. It was Mrs. Bristow——”
“Yes, I know. I am very indiscreet, putting so many questions, but you reminded me of—of some one I once knew. Mrs. Bristow, you were saying?”
“She was very anxious to know something of Mr. Mannering and his child. I think she must be a relation of his late wife.”
“God be thanked if there is a relation that may be of use to Dora. She wants to know—what? If you were going to question the landlady, it would not be much——”
“I was to try to do exactly what I seem to have been so fortunate as to have done—to find some friend whom I could ask about them. I am sure you must be a friend to them?”
“How can you be sure of that, you that know neither them nor me?”
He smiled, with a very attractive, ingenuous smile. “Because you have the face of a friend.”
“Have I that? There’s many, many, then, that would have been the better for knowing it that have never found it out. And you are a friend to Mrs. Bristow on the other side?”
“A friend to her?—no, I am more like her son, yet not her son, for my own mother is living—at least, I believe so. I am her servant, and a little her ward, and—devoted to her,” he added, with a bright flush of animation and sincerity. Miss Bethune took no notice of these last words.