“Grace, Grace,” cried Milly, “let us go away!”
Grace’s face varied every moment as one emotion after another swept over it. “I don’t know what to do,” she said piteously, “Milly”: “But I think there is something to find out,” she added--“I think there is something more!”
“If you wish to have your father’s character taken away, and the cheat he attempted found out----” cried Miss Anna, with sudden fury. Then she stopped, seeing the mistake she had made. “I beg your pardon, I am sure,” she went on, with fictitious amiability. “You are making me identify this respectable person from Canada, poor man, for whom I am very sorry--with a wretched impostor, a fellow that never came back, or made the slightest effort to support his ridiculous claim. Of course, if you like to stay till my sister comes back,” she added, “I can have no objection. She is a silly, credulous woman; she will believe any story you like to tell her, so you may give the rein to your invention. But one caution I will give you: say nothing about her son. Make believe, at all events, that you know nothing about her son.”
“Oh, Grace, why should we be insulted? What can it matter to us? Let us go away,” Milly cried.
But if there was one thing better known among the young Yorkes than another, it was that Grace was obstinate. Nothing, the boys said, would make her give in, even when she was beaten. She turned round to Geoffrey, even while her sister was speaking.
“Sir,” she said, “we don’t know you, not even your name; but if you think your mother will understand better--if you think she will know anything about us, I would rather wait till she comes. We do not want money, or help, if that is what Miss Anna supposes; we want nothing except to know----”
“Then why in heaven’s name do you insist on staying? against my will, who am the mistress of the house? I say I will not have you here. I will have no adventurers here. I do not believe there is a word of truth in your story. That man is not dead. Impostors never die. It is all a got-up affair from beginning to end. Look here!” cried Miss Anna, striking her stick on the floor, “as I don’t want to have the whole story raked up in a court of justice, where you would not have a chance, not a leg to stand upon, you or your precious father--I’d rather come to terms with you, and let it go no further. How much will you take to give up your claims altogether? They are false, utterly false; but I don’t want to be made a talk of. I would rather settle it and be done with it, if you will say how much you will take, and start by the next steamboat. There is a steamboat every week, every day perhaps, for anything I know.”