“Yes, I believe I see her once,” replied Rob.
“The night she went away, Robby, eh?” said the old woman in his ear, and taking note of every change in his face. “Aha! I know it was that night.”
“Well, if you know it was that night, you know, Misses Brown,” replied Rob, “it’s no use putting pinchers into a cove to make him say so.”
“Where did they go that night, Rob? Straight away? How did they go? Where did you see her? Did she laugh? Did she cry? Tell me all about it,” cried the old hag, holding him closer yet, patting the hand that was drawn through his arm against her other hand, and searching every line in his face with her bleared eyes. “Come! Begin! I want to be told all about it. What, Rob, boy! You and me can keep a secret together, eh? We’ve done so before now. Where did they go first, Rob?”
The wretched Grinder made a gasp, and a pause.
“Are you dumb?” said the old woman, angrily.
“Lord, Misses Brown, no! You expect a cove to be a flash of lightning. I wish I was the electric fluency,” muttered the bewildered Grinder. “I’d have a shock at somebody, that would settle their business.”
“What do you say?” asked the old woman, with a grin.
“I’m wishing my love to you, Misses Brown,” returned the false Rob, seeking consolation in the glass. “Where did they go to first was it? Him and her, do you mean?”
“Ah!” said the old woman, eagerly. “Them two.”
“Why, they didn’t go nowhere—not together, I mean,” answered Rob.
The old woman looked at him, as though she had a strong impulse upon her to make another clutch at his head and throat, but was restrained by a certain dogged mystery in his face.
“That was the art of it,” said the reluctant Grinder; “that’s the way nobody saw ’em go, or has been able to say how they did go. They went different ways, I tell you Misses Brown.”
“Ay, ay, ay! To meet at an appointed place,” chuckled the old woman, after a moment’s silent and keen scrutiny of his face.
“Why, if they weren’t a going to meet somewhere, I suppose they might as well have stayed at home, mightn’t they, Brown?” returned the unwilling Grinder.
“Well, Rob? Well?” said the old woman, drawing his arm yet tighter through her own, as if, in her eagerness, she were afraid of his slipping away.
“What, haven’t we talked enough yet, Misses Brown?” returned the Grinder, who, between his sense of injury, his sense of liquor, and his sense of being on the rack, had become so lachrymose, that at almost every answer he scooped his coats into one or other of his eyes, and uttered an unavailing whine of remonstrance. “Did she laugh that night, was it? Didn’t you ask if she laughed, Misses Brown?”
“Or cried?” added the old woman, nodding assent.
“Neither,” said the Grinder. “She kept as steady when she and me—oh, I see you will have it out of me, Misses Brown! But take your solemn oath now, that you’ll never tell anybody.”
This Mrs. Brown very readily did: being naturally Jesuitical; and having no other intention in the matter than that her concealed visitor should hear for himself.
“She kept as steady, then, when she and me went down to Southampton,” said the Grinder, “as a image. In the morning she was just the same, Misses Brown. And when she went away in the packet before daylight, by herself—me pretending to be her servant, and seeing her safe aboard—she was just the same. Now, are you contented, Misses Brown?”
“No, Rob. Not yet,” answered Mrs. Brown, decisively.
“Oh, here’s a woman for you!” cried the unfortunate Rob, in an outburst of feeble lamentation over his own helplessness. “What did you wish to know next, Misses Brown?”
“What became of Master? Where did he go?” she inquired, still holding him tight, and looking close into his face, with her sharp eyes.
“Upon my soul, I don’t know, Misses Brown,” answered Rob. “Upon my soul I don’t know what he did, nor where he went, nor anything about him I only know what he said to me as a caution to hold my tongue, when we parted; and I tell you this, Misses Brown, as a friend, that sooner than ever repeat a word of what we’re saying now, you had better take and shoot yourself, or shut yourself up in this house, and set it afire, for there’s nothing he wouldn’t do, to be revenged upon you. You don’t know him half as well as I do, Misses Brown. You’re never safe from him, I tell you.”
“Haven’t I taken an oath,” retorted the old woman, “and won’t I keep it?”
“Well, I’m sure I hope you will, Misses Brown,” returned Rob, somewhat doubtfully, and not without a latent threatening in his manner. “For your own sake, quite as much as mine.”
He looked at her as he gave her this friendly caution, and emphasized it with a nodding of his head; but finding it uncomfortable to encounter the yellow face with its grotesque action, and the ferret eyes with their keen old wintry gaze, so close to his own, he looked down uneasily and sat shuffling in his chair, as if he were trying to bring himself to a sullen declaration that he would answer no more questions. The old woman, still holding him as before, took this opportunity of raising the forefinger of her right hand, in the air, as a stealthy signal to the concealed observer to give particular attention to what was about to follow.
“Rob,” she said, in her most coaxing tone.
“Good gracious, Misses Brown, what’s the matter now?” returned the exasperated Grinder.
“Rob! where did the lady and Master appoint to meet?”
Rob shuffled more and more, and looked up and looked down, and bit his thumb, and dried it on his waistcoat, and finally said, eyeing his tormentor askance, “How should I know, Misses Brown?”
The old woman held up her
