“Go on,” cried Mr Brown; “she can’t hear you now, can she? Go on.”
“She went off with a soldier—that’s the truth. They were married after; but missis never thought that mattered. He was a common man, and as plain a looking fellow as you’d see anywhere. Missis cast her off, and would have nothing to say to her. She over-persuaded me, and I let her in one night; but missis wouldn’t look at her. She never came back. She was hurt in her feelin’s. We never heard of her more.”
“Nor asked after her, I suppose?” said the lawyer, indignantly. “Do you mean the old wretch never made any inquiry about her own child?”
“Meaning missis?” said Nancy. “No—I don’t know as she ever did. She said she’d disown her; and she was a woman as always kept her word.”
“Old beast!” said John Brown between his teeth; “but, look here; if she’s married, she is not Phœbe Thomson. What’s her name?”
“I can’t tell,” said Nancy, looking a little frightened. “Sure, neither she is—to think of us never remarking that! But dear, dear! will that make any difference to the will?”
Mr Brown smiled grimly, but made no answer. “Have you got anything else to tell me about her? Did she ever write to her mother? Do you know what regiment it is, or where it was at that time?” said the attorney. “Think what you are about, and tell me clearly—what year was she married, and where were you at the time?”
Nancy grew nervous under this close questioning. She lost her self-possession and all her fancied importance. “We were in the Isle o’ Man, where the Christians come from. I was born there myself. Missis’s friends was mostly there. It was by her husband’s side she belonged to Carlingford. It was about a two miles out of Douglas—a kind of a farmhouse. It was the year—the year—I was fifteen,” said Nancy, faltering.
“And how old are you now?” said the inexorable questioner, who had taken out his memorandum-book.
Nancy dropped into a chair and began to sob. “It’s hard on a person bringing things back,” said Nancy,—“and to think if she should actually turn up again just as she was! As for living in the house with her, I couldn’t think of such a thing. Sally Christian, or some poor-spirited person might do it, but not me as am used to be my own mistress,” cried Nancy, with increasing agitation. “She had the temper of —— oh! she was her mother’s temper. Dear, dear! to think as she might be alive, and come back to put all wrong! It was in the year ’eight—that’s the year it was.”