Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 1.djvu/171

Rh therefore, if you will inform me what you have heard, or imagined against her, I shall, perhaps, be able to set you right."

"Can you tell me, then, who was her husband; or if she ever had any?"

Indignation kept me silent. At such a time and place I could not trust myself to answer.

"Have you never observed," said Eliza, "what a striking likeness there is between that child of hers and—"

"And whom?" demanded Miss Wilson, with an air of cold, but keen severity.

Eliza was startled: the timidly spoken suggestion had been intended for my ear alone.

"Oh, I beg your pardon!" pleaded she, "I may be mistaken—perhaps I was mistaken."

But she accompanied the words with a sly glance of derision directed to me from the corner of her disingenuous eye.

"There's no need to ask my pardon," replied her friend; "but I see no one here that at all resembles that child, except his mother; and