She was leaning back in one of the smaller chairs. Mr. Conroy stood against the old-fashioned mantelpiece. The old man took a chair near the door with a sinking heart.
"Some considerable time ago, Aaron," began his mistress in a grave but not unkindly voice, "I put certain questions to you bearing reference to my uncle's illness and death. I had been led to suppose that some mystery attached to that time, and that, whatever it was, it had been kept, and was intended to be kept, from me. You denied it; you told me I was mistaken."
"No, no, Miss Ella, I kept nothing back from you; I didn't indeed," answered the old man, in a trembling, beseeching voice, his agitation pitiable to see.
"But I now know that you did, Aaron. I know that while my uncle was said to have died in the middle of May, he really died weeks and weeks before that date! Will you tell me why you induced me to believe that it was my uncle whom John Tilney and the choristers from Nullington saw on the evening of his birthday, and whom Mr. Plackett, the lawyer from London, saw a day or two later, and whom Mr. Daventry's partner saw--when you knew quite well that it was you yourself, dressed up so as to personate your master, whom each and all of them beheld?"
Aaron's teeth began to chatter.
"The truth is known to me at last," continued Ella. "Do not make any further attempts to deceive me; they will be useless."
"Quite useless," struck in Conroy, a sternness in his tone that Miss Winter's had lacked. "We know all."
What little tinge of colour had been in Aaron's rugged face fled from it; he looked like a man suddenly stricken with some mortal sickness. He turned his affrighted eyes from his mistress to Conroy, and from Conroy to her again.
"Better make a clean breast of it," said Conroy, quietly.
"I will," at length spoke Aaron, in a husky whisper, probably seeing that no other course remained to him. "The Squire did die afore May; long afore his birthday too, the twenty-fourth of April."