"None, ma'am; none whatever. He must have been quite mad."
"No, he was not mad, I think. He spoke those words as a truthful man speaks. It seemed to me then, it seems to me still, that there was truth in them: though I don't know how much."
"Miss Ella," cried the old man eagerly, "you know what has been said--that a keg o' spirits was on board below. Hubert must have got to it."
That this was to a certain extent true, she believed; but not that he had taken sufficient to induce him to invent such a thing.
"His mother died in an asylum, poor thing," resumed Aaron, catching up his labouring breath; "and at times--only at times, you know, ma'am--I have not been able to rightly make him out, and I've fancied that he might have a touch of her complaint, and wasn't altogether his own master. It must have been so that afternoon."
Aaron's hands trembled like those of a man afflicted with palsy, and the muscles of his face twitched convulsively as he spoke. His mistress could scarcely find in her heart to question him further.
"And yet it was a very strange assertion for Hubert to make," she said, speaking gently. "He stated distinctly that I held Heron Dyke by fraud. Now, were such the case, Aaron, you, as my uncle's confidential servant, must surely be aware of it. Hubert would not know what you do not, especially of a grave secret."
"That he'd not," affirmed the old man. "I knew more of the Squire's secrets, Miss Ella, than any man living. Were he alive this moment he'd tell you so."
"Then there was--there is--no fraud, as far as you are aware?"
"Certainly not, ma'am. How would it be possible?"