Bess stretched out her hand to him. Jeffray took it and held it in his, feeling it warm and dewy, full of the swift moving blood of youth.
“Ursula has confessed,” he said, looking in her eyes.
“Ursula?”
“Yes—”
“Is it of Dan?”
Jeffray’s calm face reassured her as she leaned towards him with sudden dread.
“No,” he said, “I had a letter from the King’s officer an hour ago; they had found Ursula tied to a chair in her cottage, and hearing that Dan was dead—and her kinsfolk scattered, she made a confession about the past. You are no Grimshaw, Bess, but some one’s child from over the sea.”
Jeffray told her all that had been laid bare in the old woman’s confession, Bess lying back in the corner of the coach, her eyes looking out at the country that was sweeping by. Her fingers crept round Jeffray’s wrist, and contracted spasmodically as though she wished to realize that he was near. The wild and fantastic tale unfolded itself before her, the great ship sunk at sea, the murder of the four sailors in the forest, the hiding of the treasure, the beginning of her own life in Pevensel. She began to understand much that had puzzled her of old, why Isaac had been mad for her to marry Dan, and why the old man had wished to kill her after she had watched them uncovering the chest by the Monk’s Grave.
“Richard,” she said, very softly, still looking out of the window.
He bent towards her with great tenderness.