“Livin’ at Hanwitch, along with her husband, Mr. Conway, the dentist.”
The woman’s eyes, when she made this answer, were on the garden; when she looked again at Holdsworth, his face was turned from her.
“Did you know any of the parties, sir, as you’re asking about?” she inquired.
He did not answer her, and she, thinking that he had not heard her, continued:
“I was servant along with poor Mr. Newcome before the old gentleman died, and saw a good deal of Mrs. Holdsworth, as I always call her; for, somehow, I can never bear to think of her as Mrs. Conway, for her heart never went with her hand when she married that gentleman, as I can bear witness to, for I was at the wedding, and never saw a poor body cry as she did. She and her grandmother, old Mrs. Flemming, was often at the rectory ... but I beg pardon, sir; you was speaking of the house. I can’t remember who had it before Mrs. Holdsworth. It’s a long time ago.”
Holdsworth raised his head.
Up to the moment of her speaking of Dolly he had not known his own name; all other memories had returned to him, save that. His face was very white, but there was a strong expression in it. If the woman were to talk for another twelve hours, she could add nothing more to what she had already said. Dolly’s death he had expected as he had expected a hundred other nameless possibilities, when memory swooped upon him and set him peering over the edge of the chasm that separated the Then from the Now; but not her marriage. Not that. In all the hours he had passed in the open boat at sea, beholding death striking down his companions about him, suffering the exquisite torture of thirst, the yet more exquisite pang of hopelessness, there was no moment of agony in all that time comparable to the agony that now wrenched him. It might be one of those terrible experiences which break the heart or transform the nature, but it gave to or found in Holdsworth a quality of endurance that enabled him to front the extremity with a face of marble.
When next he spoke his voice was low, but without a tremor in it.
“I am interested in Mrs. Conway and her old grandmother. Tell me what you know about them.”