'He—he did not speak well of your mother. He led me to—to think; but I will enter into no particulars.'
'Olver is our mortal enemy. I do not know wherefore, unless it be that he has been filching the money all these years. He hates mother, and he dislikes me. If he has dared to speak against her, he shall be called to account. There is one whom I can trust'—she held up her head—'one who will take him by the throat and make him unsay every word.'
Mr. Holwood knew that she did not refer to himself, and he was humbled at the thought that his child should look to another to vindicate her mother's good name.
'No,' said Winefred, with heightened colour and sparkling eyes, and speaking with vehemence, 'my dear mother has done nothing to forfeit your esteem, nothing to dishonour your name. She has been poor, and has huxtered tapes and packets of pins, and has trudged through rain and mire, and there is none in all the country round who can say an ill word against her that has in it a spice even of truth.'
'And she is now in poverty?'
Then, and not till this moment, did the recollection of the one great and terrible fault committed by her mother recur to Winefred.
She suddenly dropped her head and covered her face with her hands.