How
long she had been standing there, heaven only knew; but her round, rosy
face was confused between awe and resolution, and she had made a sad
mess of her white apron. Her blue eyes met Winton's with a sort of
desperation.
"About what Markey told me, sir. My old master wouldn't have liked it,
sir."
Touched on the raw by this reminder that before the world he had been
nothing to the loved one, that before the world the squire, who had been
nothing to her, had been everything, Winton said icily:
"Indeed! You will be good enough to comply with my wish, all the same."
The stout woman's face grew very red. She burst out, breathless:
"Yes, sir; but I've seen what I've seen. I never said anything, but I've
got eyes. If Miss Gyp's to take your name, sir, then tongues'll wag, and
my dear, dead mistress--"
But at the look on his face she stopped, with her mouth open.
"You will be kind enough to keep your thoughts to yourself. If any word
or deed of yours gives the slightest excuse for talk--you go. Understand
me, you go, and you never see Gyp again! In the meantime you will do
what I ask. Gyp is my adopted daughter."
She had always been a little afraid of him, but she had never seen that
look in his eyes or heard him speak in that voice. And she bent her
full moon of a face and went, with her apron crumpled as apron had never
been, and tears in her eyes.
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