“Yes. Her left foot was nothing to be proud of, I can tell you! By her own account, she has some horrid deformity in it, between the third toe and the fourth. No; I didn’t hear her say what the deformity was. I only heard her call it so—and she said her ‘poor darling’ was born with the same fault, and that was her defence against being imposed upon by rogues—I remember the very words—‘in the past days when I employed people to find her.’ Yes! she said ‘her.‘ I heard it plainly. And she talked afterwards of her ‘poor lost daughter’, who might be still living somewhere, and wondering who her mother was. Naturally enough, when I heard that hateful old drunkard talking about a child given to her by Mr. Farnaby, I put two and two together. Dear me, how strangely you look! What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m only very much interested—that’s all. But there’s one thing I don’t understand. What had Mr. Goldenheart to do with all this?”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“No.”
“Well, then, I tell you now. Mrs. Farnaby is not only a heartless wretch, who turns a poor girl out of her situation, and refuses to give her a character—she’s a fool besides. That precious exhibition of her nasty foot was to inform Mr. Goldenheart of something she wanted him to know. If he happened to meet with a girl, in his walks or his travels, and if he found that she had the same deformity in the same foot, then he might know for certain—”
“All right! I understand. But why Mr. Goldenheart?”
“Because she had a dream that Mr. Goldenheart had found the lost girl, and because she thought there was one chance in a hundred that her dream might come true! Did you ever hear of such a fool before? From what I could make out, I believe she actually cried about it. And that same woman turns me into the street to be ruined, for all she knows or cares. Mind this! I would have kept her secret—it was no business of mine, after all—if she had behaved decently to me. As it is, I mean to be even with her; and what I heard down in the kitchen is more than enough to help me to it. I’ll expose her somehow—I don’t quite know how; but that will come with time. You will keep the secret, dear, I’m sure. We are soon to have all our secrets in common, when we are man and wife, ain’t we? Why, you’re not listening to me! What is the matter with you?”
Jervy suddenly looked up. His soft insinuating manner had vanished; he spoke roughly and impatiently.
“I want to know something. Has Farnaby’s wife got money of her own?”
Phoebe’s mind was still disturbed by the change in her lover. “You speak as if you were angry with me,” she said.