This fable seemed so satisfactory to her that she whispered it to one or two persons, who in turn whispered it to two or three others, till it became generally whispered and believed, and was indeed only not heard by the persons whom it immediately concerned, and who alone could have disproved it.
“But if she’s old Billy’s heiress, it don’t matter a pin whose daughter she was?” said Brancepeth, with admirable common sense, the kind of common sense which is a conspicuous trait of youth at the end of this century.
And it was the general sentiment.
This story came to the ears of Hurstmanceaux.
“Who told you?” he said to the lady who prattled it to him.
“Mouse,” the lady hastened to say. “It is because it came from her that I believed it.”
He went to his sister.
“I hear you are the originator of a story that Miss Massarene is the daughter of Framlingham. What authority have you for such a statement?”
She laughed a little.
“Oh, I don’t know! I think so——”