ked me what's happened,
mavourneen, and sure, I'll tell ye. For it's the pretty young lady that
ye are and a cruel shame that ye should ever belong to the likes of him.
It's his doing, Miss Dinah, every bit of it, and it's the truth I'm
speaking, as the Almighty Himself could tell ye if He'd a mind to. The
poor lamb was fading away aisy like, but he came along and broke her
heart. It was them letters, Miss Dinah. He took 'em. And he burned 'em,
my dear, he burned 'em, and when ye were gone she missed 'em, and then he
told her what he'd done, told her brutal-like that it was time she'd done
with such litter. He said it was all damn' nonsense that she was wasting
her life over 'em and over the dead. Oh, it was wicked, it was cruel. And
she--poor innocent--she locked herself up when he'd gone and cried and
cried and cried till the poor heart of her was broke entirely. She said
she'd lost touch with her darling husband and he'd never come back to her
again."

"Biddy!" Horror undisguised sounded in Dinah's low voice. "He never did
such a thing as that!"

"He did that!" A queer species of triumph was apparent in Biddy's
rejoinder; malice twinkled for a second in her eyes. "I've told ye! I've
told ye!" she said. And then, with sharp anxiety. "But ye'll not tell
anyone as ye know, Miss Dinah. Ye promised, now didn't ye? Miss Isabel
wouldn't that any should know--not even Master Scott. He was away when it
happened, dining down at the Vicarage he was. And Miss Isabel she says to
me, 'For the life of ye, don't tell Master Scott! He'd be that angry,'
she says, 'and Sir Eustace would murder him entirely if it came to a
quarrel.' She was that insistent, Miss Dinah, and I knew there was truth
in what she said. Master Scott has the heart of a lion. He never knew the
meaning of fear from his babyhood. And Sir Eustace is a monster of
destruction when once his blood's up. And he minds what Master Scott says
more than anyone. So I promised, Miss Dinah dear, the same as you have.
And so he doesn't know to this day. Sir Eustace, ye see, has been in a
touchy mood all along, ever since ye left. Like gunpowder he's been, and
Master Scott has had a difficult enough time with him; and Miss Isabel
has kept it from him so that he thinks it was just your going again that
made her fret so. There, now ye know all, Miss Dinah dear, and don't ye
for the love of heaven tell a soul what I've told ye! Miss Isabel would
never forgive me if she came to know