‘He seemed to think he had something to do with it,’ said Mab, with a snort of disdain.
‘Poor Jim! and perhaps he had. He brought me a message. You never told me much about Mrs. Brown, Mab.’
‘Oh, mother! I told you till I was tired telling you. I told you she was a lady. Well, what business had a lady in our school? But what does all that matter now? Who was she, mother? It is your turn to tell me.’
‘An old friend, Mab.’
‘Oh, that I know! But something more, surely? or you would not have been so startled to-day, or so distressed to miss her.’
‘The distress was selfish,’ said Lady William. ‘She was with me once, at a most important moment of my life; and she can help me better than any one to settle that question with the lawyers about your money, Mab.’
‘Oh!’ said Mab, ‘She told me she knew my father, and old John, as she called him, and——’
‘And you never told me, Mab.’
‘It was in a kind of confidence. And she did not say she knew you; and it was all so mixed up with things—that made me think she oughtn’t to be there, mother, in our school. And yet how could I tell any one, and make her lose her place? And that is why I wanted you to go this morning, to see what you thought; for you would have known in a moment if there was anything wrong.’
‘And that is why you have been so often at the school of late, my little girl?’