"I never laid any blame on you," he answered. "I knew you wouldn't hurt a fly."
She broke into painful, hysterical laughter.
"No more I wouldn't. To think it's me own baby boy that I've carried in me arms, and him a priest!"
The attendant, who had been watching in stupid and undisguised curiosity, gave an audible sniff.
"Oh, he ain't a real priest," she interrupted with brutal candor. "They're just fakes. They ain't even Catholics."
A pang of irritation shot through Maurice at the girl's words, but his sense of humor asserted itself, and helped him to smile at his own weakness.
"But, Norah," he said, ignoring the taunt, "I want to know about yourself. We've often tried to find you," he added, a sudden perception of the possible importance of this recognition coming into his mind. "You know we depended on you to tell us a lot of things at the time of Aunt Hannah's death."
"He told me you'd be after me," Norah exclaimed with rising excitement. "He said you'd be laying it to me; but, Master Maurice, by the Mother of Mercy, I never"--
"I know that," he interrupted, to check her excitement; "but why did you go off in that way?"
"She told me to go. She ordered me out of the house like a dog, just because I wouldn't give up Tim when she'd accidentally seen him when he'd had one drop more than the full of him,--and any poor body might take a wee drop more'n he meant to take beforehand. She was that hot in her way when her temper was up, rest her soul,--and that nobody knows better than yourself,--that the devil himself couldn't hold her with a pair of red-hot tongs,--saving the presence of your riverinces for mentioning the Old Gentleman."
Her momentary discomposure at having mentioned the arch fiend in the presence of those who were his professional enemies gave Wynne a chance to interpolate a question. He could easily understand that the violent excitement of a quarrel with her old servant might account for the sudden death of his aunt. He perceived in a flash how Norah, terrified by the newspaper reports which had openly accused her of making way with her mistress, would without difficulty be induced by her husband to conceal herself. The matter to him most important, however, had not yet been touched upon.