“None of our family were ever important that I ever heard of, though of course one never knows what relatives are lurking about. Mine will never claim me; that’s certain. I did have a sister––poor thing!––if she’s alive. We didn’t get along very well. I was too wild and restless as a girl. She was very good, hard-working, simple, homely as sin––or homely as virtue. I was all for adventure. I’ve had my fill of it. But once you begin it, you can’t stop when you’ve had enough. If she’s not dead, she’s probably married and living under another name––Heaven knows what name or where. But I could find her, perhaps. I’d love to go to her. She was a very good girl. She’s probably married a good man and has brought up her children piously, and never mentioned me. I’d only bring disgrace on her. She’d disown me if I came home with this cloud of scandal about me.”
“No one shall know of this scandal unless you tell.”
She laughed harshly, with a patronizing superiority.
“Really, Mr. Verrinder, did you ever know a secret to be kept?”
“This one will be.”
She laughed again at him, then at herself.
He rose wearily. “I think I shall have to be getting along. I haven’t had a bath or a shave to-day. I shall ask you to keep to your room and deny yourself to all visitors. I won’t ask you to promise not to escape. If the guard around the house is not capable of detaining you, you’re welcome to your freedom, though I warn you that England is as hard to get out of as to get into nowadays. Whatever you do, for your own sake, at least, keep this whole matter secret and stick to the story we agreed on. Good morning!”
He bowed himself out. No rattling of chains marked his closing of the door, but if he had been a turnkey in Newgate he could not have left Marie Louise feeling more a prisoner. Her room was her body’s jail, but her soul was in a dungeon, too.
As Verrinder went down the hall he scattered a covey of whispering servants.
The nurse who had waited to seize the children when they 62 came forth had left them to dress themselves while she hastened to publish in the servants’ dining-room the appalling fact that she had caught sight of a man in Miss Marie Louise’s room. The other servants had many other even more astounding things to tell––to wit: that after mysterious excitements about the house, with strange men going and coming, and the kitchen torn to pieces for mustard and warm milk and warm water and strong coffee, and other things, Sir Joseph and Lady Webling were no more, and the whole household staff was out of a job. Strange police-like persons were in the house, going through all the papers in Sir Joseph’s room. The servants could hardly wait to get out with the gossip.