"Did this nurse remain with my uncle till the last?"
"She did, ma'am. She left the day after his death, in May."
Miss Winter said no more; she was thinking. Why was the presence of this nurse in the house kept from her?--for kept it assuredly had been. Why and wherefore had the woman's name never been mentioned to her, or the fact of her having been so long at the Hall? Her uncle had not spoken of her in his letters, or Hubert Stone in his notes.
"I saw Mrs. Dexter take her departure," resumed Priscilla, as a bit of gossip. "A lovely May morning it was, and I had gone to the station to see my little nephew off by the London train. Mrs. Dexter drove up in a fly, with a trunk and a little black bag that she carried in her hand, and I saw her get into the train. It was but the day after the Squire died; the bells were tolling for him."
And of course but two or three days before Miss Winter's return. And yet no one inmate of the Hall had informed her that this nurse had been there! It was altogether very strange.
"Did you say, Priscilla, that people at the last were not admitted to see my uncle, save those who had the pass-keys?"
"Ma'am, not for months and months. Eliza told me she did not believe a soul had been allowed to go in to see him since the past November. No matter who came--the Reverend Mr. Kettle, or any other of the Squire's old friends, they were never let go in."
"I wonder why?" involuntarily exclaimed Miss Winter.
"That I couldn't say, ma'am. Nobody could, I expect, save Dr. Jago. It must have been frightfully lonely for him, poor sick gentleman! He was never seen at all, or his footsteps heard, or the sound of his voice, Eliza said. To the girl it seemed just as though he were shut up in a living tomb."
Miss Winter asked no more questions. That something, and of set purpose, had been hidden from her; some drama enacted within those walls of which it was intended that she should know nothing, she fully believed. And there came rushing into her mind Hubert Stone's words--that if the truth were known she was no more the owner of Heron Dyke than he was. Again and again she asked herself what the truth was, and how it could be brought to light.