"Ah! pardon! I have met Sir Patrick—abroad."
Miss Margaret turned upon him, and made a close and, as Lewis thought, suspicious inspection of his face.
"If you met Sir Patrick abroad, you must have seen that he had no need of his natural family, nor wish for them. There was no place for us there. Perhaps you have not heard that he withdrew his property from his family and gave it to one that was not a drop's blood to him—a creature that had stolen into a silly old man's favour? But no, that would not be known abroad," she added, with a long-drawn breath. Lewis felt himself shrink from her eye; he made a step backward, with a sense of guilt which in all the many discussions of the subject had never affected him before.
"No," he said, with an involuntary tone of apology, "no, it was not known, I think, that he had—any relations——"
Miss Margaret turned on him again with indignation more scathing than before.
"Not known that he had relations!" then she paused, and gave vent to a little laugh, "that must have been by persons who were very ignorant—by people out of society themselves," she said.
To this Lewis made no reply. What could he say? It was true that he had no standing in society himself, and he now perceived that he had been guilty of one of his usual imprudences in drawing the attention of a mind much more keen than Miss Jean's, and able to put things together, to himself and his antecedents. After a moment she resumed.
"I am speaking too strongly perhaps to you, a stranger. It was perhaps not to be expected—abroad—that everybody should know the Murrays of Murkley. That is just one of the evils of that life abroad, that it is lost sight of who you belong to. In your own country everybody knows. If you put a friendly person, in the place of your flesh-and-blood, the whole country cries out; but among strangers, who thinks or cares? No, no, I was wrong there; I ask your pardon. In Scotland, or even in England, Sir Patrick Murray's relations would be as well known as the Queen's, but not abroad—that was his safeguard, and I forgot. Poor, silly old man!" Miss Margaret said, after a pause, with energy, "he was little to me. I have scarcely seen him all my days, and Lilias never at all."
It seemed to Lewis that in this, perhaps, there was some explanation and apology for the unfortunate position of affairs; but he was so glad to escape from further questions that he did not attempt to follow the subject further. They had by this time come round the other corner of the building, and he perceived that the two other ladies had not waited for Miss Margaret, but were already half-way along the broad and well-kept drive which led from the unfinished palace to the old house. The blue veil fluttering in advance caught his eye, and he said, more with the desire to divert his companion from the previous subject than out of any special interest in this,
"Your sister, whom I have not seen, is the youngest?"