"Indeed, dear Major Strickland, you must not say that. The truth can never injure us. But now you will tell me, will you not, all that you know or have heard respecting this father whom I shall never see on earth?"
But it was not the major's intention to tell Janet all that he knew respecting Captain Ducie. The story he did tell her was a mild version of the one that had been told him.
He could not conceal from her the fact that Captain Ducie had purposely abandoned his wife, nor that he had led her to believe that he had been drowned in order that the tie between them might be more completely severed. But he softened both circumstances in the telling, and made as many excuses for the dead man as if he had been a brother of his own.
On Captain Ducie's after-career he dwelt lightly and tenderly, contriving to leave on Janet's mind the impression that her father had been more sinned against than sinning.
Finally, he altogether suppressed the fact of Ducie's suicide, and left Janet to suppose, that although her father's death had been a sudden one, it had proceeded from causes that were natural and entirely beyond his own control. What information he had gathered respecting Captain Ducie's relatives and connexions he left to be told at some future time.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
THE DEPARTURE OF SIR JOHN POLLEXFEN.
But now the day was drawing near which had been fixed by Sir John Pollexfen in his will as that on which his body should be committed to the vault where the bones of several generations of his ancestors already reposed. Sir John would soon have been dead twenty years. On the twentieth anniversary of his decease, his body would leave Dupley Walls for ever.
That this day had long been looked forward to by Lady Pollexfen, Janet was well aware.
The fierce old woman had often declared that not till the dead body of her husband should be removed from Dupley Walls, would the curse that had rested on the house from the day of his death be lifted off it, and rendered powerless for further harm.