“Oh, ma’am!” she burst out at length, wringing her hands, “how ever can I tell you? You will never speak to me again. Little did I think such a disgrace was waiting me!”
“It was no fault of yours if you were misinformed,” said her mistress, “or that your uncle was not the rich man you fancied.”
“Oh, ma’am, there was no mistake there! He was more than twice as rich as I fancied. If he had only died a beggar, and left things as they was!”
“Then he didn’t leave it to his nephews and nieces as they told you?—Well, there’s no disgrace in that.”
“Oh! but he did, ma’am: that was all right; no mistake there either, ma’am.—And to think o’ me behavin’ as I did—to you and master as was so good to me! Who’ll ever take any more notice of me now, after what has come out—as I’m sure I no more dreamed on than the child unborn!”
An agonized burst of fresh weeping followed, and it was with prolonged difficulty, and by incessant questioning, that Mrs. Greatorex at length drew from her the following facts.
Before Alice and her brother could receive the legacy to which they laid claim, it was necessary to produce certain documents, the absence of which, as of any proof to take their place, led to the unavoidable publication of a fact previously known only to a living few—namely, that the father and mother of Alice Hopwood had never been married, which fact deprived them of the smallest claim on the legacy, and fell like a millstone upon Alice and her pride. From the height of her miserable arrogance she fell prone—not merely hurled back into the lowly condition from which she had raised her head only to despise it with base unrighteousness, and to adopt and reassert the principles she had abhorred when they affected herself—not merely this, but, in her own