her face away
from Amelius. After waiting a little, finding her still silent, still
immovable, he ventured on putting a question.

"Are you sure you are not deceived?" he asked. "I remember you told me
that rogues had tried to impose on you, in past times when you employed
people to find her."

"I have proof that I am not being imposed upon," Mrs. Farnaby answered,
still keeping her face hidden from him. "One of them knows of the fault
in her foot."

"One of them?" Amelius repeated. "How many of them are there?"

"Two. The old woman, and a young man."

"What are their names?"

"They won't tell me their names yet."

"Isn't that a little suspicious?"

"One of them knows," Mrs. Farnaby reiterated, "of the fault in her
foot."

"May I ask which of them knows? The old woman, I suppose?"

"No, the young man."

"That's strange, isn't it? Have you seen the young man?"

"I know nothing of him, except the little that the woman told me. He has
written me a letter."

"May I look at it?"

"I daren't let you look at it!"

Amelius said no more. If he had felt the smallest suspicion that the
disclosure volunteered by Mrs. Farnaby, at their first interview, had
been overheard by the unknown person who had opened the swinging window
in the kitchen, he might have recalled Phoebe's vindictive language at
his lodgings, and the doubts suggested to him by his discovery of
the vagabond waiting for her in the street. As it was, he was simply
puzzled. The one plain conclusion to his mind was, unhappily, the
natural conclusion after what he had heard--that Mrs. Farnaby had no
sort of interest in the discovery of Simple Sally, and that he need
trouble himself with no further anxiety in that matter. Strange as Mrs.
Farnaby's mysterious revelation seemed, her correspondent's knowledge
of the fault in the foot was circumstance in his favour, beyond dispute.
Amelius still wondered inwardly how it was that the woman who had taken
charge of the child had failed to discover what appeared to be known to
another person. If he had been aware that Mrs. Sowler's occupation at
the time was the occupation of a "baby-farmer," and that she had many
other deserted children pining under her charge, he might have easily
understood that she was the last person in the world to trouble herself
with a minute examination of any one of the unfortunate little creatures
abandoned to her drunken and merciless neglect. Jervy had satisfied
himself, before