"Quite a woman, then," said Walden lightly; "Old enough to know her own mind at any rate. Do you remember her?"
"Perfectly well, sir,--a little flitterin' creature all eyes and hair, with a saucy way of tossin' her curls about, and a trick of singin' and shoutin' all over the place. She used to climb the pine trees and sit in them and pelt her father with the cones. Oh, yes, sir, she was a terrible child to rule, and it's Gospel truth there was no ruling her, for the governesses came and went like the seasons, one in, t'other out. Ay, but the Lord knows I'll never forget the scream she gave when the Squire was brought home from the hunting field stone dead!"
Here John Walden turned his head towards her with an air of more interest than he had yet shown.
"Ah!--How was that?" he enquired.
"He was killed jumpin' a fence;" went on Mrs. Spruce; "A fine, handsome gentleman,--they say he'd been wild in his youth; anyhow he got married in London to a great Court beauty, so I've been told. And after the wedding, they went travelling allover the world for a year and a half, and just when they was expected 'ome Mrs. Vancourt died with the birth of the child, and he and the baby and the nurses all came back here and he never stirred away again himself till death took him at full gallop,--which is 'ow he always wished to die. But poor Miss Maryllia--" And Mrs. Spruce sighed dolefully-- "'Twas hard on her, seein' him ride off so gay and well and cheery in the early mornin' to be brought home afore noon a corpse! Ay, it was an awsome visitation of the Lord! Often when the wind goes wimblin' through the pines near the house I think I 'ear her shriek now,--ay, sir!--it was like the cry of somethin' as was havin' its heart tore out!"
Walden stood very silent, listening. This narrative was new to him, and even Mrs. Spruce's manner of relating it was not without a certain rough eloquence. The ancient history of the Vancourts he knew as well as he knew the priceless archaeological value of their old Manor-house as a perfect gem of unspoilt Tudor architecture,-- but though he had traced the descent of the family from Robert Priaulx de Vaignecourt of the twelfth century and his brother Osmonde Priaulx de Vaignecourt who had, it was rumoured, founded a monastery in the neighbourhood, and had died during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he had ceased to follow the genealogical tree with much attention or interest when the old Norman name of De Vaignecourt had degenerated into De Vincourt and finally in the times of James I. had settled down into Vancourt. Yet there was a touch of old-world tragedy in Mrs. Spruce's modern history of the young girl's shriek when she found herself suddenly fatherless on that fatal hunting morning.