“Oh—h!” cried Miss Hewitt, with an air of disappointment; “then it wasn’t from the shock? And what’s their meaning, then, Mister Piercey—if you call yourself Piercey—in sending to me?”
“That is precisely what I can’t tell you,” said Gerald, with much candour. “I confess that it seems absurd, but I supposed, perhaps, that you would know.”
“And why should it seem absurd? I know a deal more about the Pierceys than you think for, or any fine gentleman that comes questioning of me, as if I were an old hag in the village. Oh! I know the way that you, as calls yourselves gentlemen, speak!”
“I hope,” said Gerald, surprised, “that I don’t speak in any unbecoming way, or fail in respect to any woman. It is very likely that you know much more than I do, and the question is one that is easily settled. Could you throw any light upon the question where Gervase Piercey is, and if so, will you tell me his address?”
She looked at him for a moment as if uncertain how to respond—whether to play with the victim any longer, or to make a pounce and end it. Then she said, quickly, “Did he send you himself?”
“Did who send me?”
“Giles—Sir Giles; don’t you understand? Was it him as thought of Patience Hewitt? That’s what I want to know.”
“Miss Hewitt, Lady Piercey is very ill——”
“Ah! he never was in love with her,” cried the old lady; “never! He married her—he was drawn in to do it; but I know as he hated it when he did it. It never was for her, if it was he has sent you. Not for her, but for——”
She stopped and looked at him again, with a glare in her eyes, yet resolved, apparently, not to pounce but to play a little longer. “Ah! so my lady’s ill, is she? She’s an old woman, more like an old hag, I can tell you, than me. She was thirty-five, if she was a day, when she married Sir Giles, and high living and nothing to do has made her dreadful. He never could abear fat women, and it serves him right. Some people never lose their figure, whatever their age may be.”