“You have altered but little since I knew you,” observed Mrs Tremayne, “and I hope that you may retain your health and strength for many years to come.”
“That’s as God wills,” said the dame. “I pray it may be so for the sake of my little Nelly here.”
“She is your grandchild, I suppose,” observed Mrs Tremayne.
“Ay, and the only one I have got to live for now. Her father has just gone, and she and I are left alone.”
“O granny, but there is Michael; don’t talk of him as gone,” exclaimed Nelly. “He will come back, surely he will come back.”
This remark of Nelly’s caused Mr and Mrs Tremayne to make further inquiries.
They at first regretted that they had been compelled to take shelter in the cottage, but as the dame continued talking, their interest in what she said increased.
“It seemed strange, Mistress Tremayne, that you should have come here at this moment,” she observed. “Our Michael is the grandson of one whom you knew well in your childhood; she was Nancy Trewinham, who was nurse in the family of your mother, Lady Saint Mabyn; and you, if I mistake not, were old enough at the time to remember her.”
“Yes, indeed, I do perfectly well; and I have often heard my mother express her regret that so good and gentle a young woman should have married a man who, though apparently well-to-do in the world, was more than suspected to be of indifferent character,” said the lady. “We could gain no intelligence of her after she left Penzance, though I remember my father saying that he had no doubt a noted smuggler whose vessel was lost off this coast was the man she had married. Being interested in her family, he made inquiries, but could not ascertain whether she had survived her unhappy husband or not. And have you, indeed, taken charge of her grandson in addition to those of your own family whom you have had to support?”
“It was not I took charge of the boy, but my good son-in-law, who lies dead there,” said the dame. “He thought it but a slight thing, and only did what he knew others would do by him.”