“Dear, what is the matter?”
“That for all my prayers,” she went on, as if speaking to herself; “that for all my hope to keep my son from that doomed house,—this yet should be! Dear God, if it be Thy purpose that out of evil shall at last come good—” but broke off and looked wildly at me.
I held her hands, and, wondering, asked, “Who are the Craikes, then? What is the doomed house? Why have we passed for all these years as Howe, and lived as village folk at Chelton, if our name be Craike? Hiding from them—my father’s kinsfolk?”
“Yes, yes, hiding from them, and from their wealth—their ill-gotten wealth.”
“Ill-gotten,—how?”
“You’ll know—oh, soon enough, you’ll know.”
“Mr. Bradbury said a week to-day I go away with him. And you—what of you, mother?”
“I stay here!”
“You stay here alone, and I go to London and on to my grandfather’s house? Not I!”
“Yes, you go! You go to your grandfather—to be rich—his heir. You go to bring to nothing all your uncle’s years of plotting, all the hurt that he has ever done to mine and me. Surely you go! But never shall I set foot in that accursed house.”