An exclamation of dismay escaped from Ringfield.
"Better if it had been!" he cried.
"Well, I may say that I agree with you, sir. The rector and his wife got a home for them in the village, and although we have learned something about them it is very little, and as the money for their support comes from here, I thought it time, sir, to look more thoroughly into the affair."
"From here? You are sure?"
Ringfield was ready to defend, even shield, Miss Clairville if necessary.
"It was brought or sent by one of the servants at the Manor House out by the lake. Without fear of exaggeration, sir, I may state that we 'ave long known this to be the case; Antoine Archambault, the young man around this room not ten minutes ago, is the bearer, and he, I suppose, knows all about it—the girl is apparently his sister, or in some way related to him—but I wouldn't care to talk to him about it and so, sir, I come to you."
"But I know nothing!" exclaimed Ringfield, rising. "Nothing whatever, not nearly as much as you do. It is no use speaking to me upon the matter. I cannot assist you in the least. What do you propose to do?"
"Why," said Enderby, flushing a darker red and rising ponderously, "this is what we propose to do, for we're tired of the affair, as isn't ours, and never was by right. The child will soon be grown up, if it lives, and it's getting stronger on its legs every day and will soon be playing with the other children. We don't want it—we don't want it any longer at Hawthorne, and we propose to find the parents and bestow it again upon those to whom it originally belonged. That's what we propose, and we look to you, sir, to help us."
"Whom do you suspect, or have you direct proof and knowledge?" Ringfield, to whom the situation was full of anguish, could hardly frame his sentences. "Pray recollect," he continued, "that in these unhappy cases it is not always wise, not always necessary, to press the matter home. I am a strong believer in the natural expiation that people undergo who allow themselves to err in these directions; the mere fact that the person or persons responsible for Angeel have had her removed to a distant parish while still caring for her shows how deeply the affair has been felt. I would not advise you to be hasty."
"'Asty—says you—'asty? After a matter of eight years? I'm sorry I didn't begin before this," cried the exasperated storekeeper, holding the virtues and morals of all Hawthorne as it were in his hand. "You ask me if I suspect any one and I answer—that I do," and he huskily whispered Miss Clairville's name.