‘I have seen you often,’ returned Monks.

‘The father of the unhappy Agnes had two daughters,’ said Mr. Brownlow. ‘What was the fate of the other — the child?’

‘The child,’ replied Monks, ‘when her father died in a strange place, in a strange name, without a letter, book, or scrap of paper that yielded the faintest clue by which his friends or relatives could be traced — the child was taken by some wretched cottagers, who reared it as their own.’

‘Go on,’ said Mr. Brownlow, signing to Mrs. Maylie to approach. ‘Go on!’

‘You couldn’t find the spot to which these people had repaired,’ said Monks, ‘but where friendship fails, hatred will often force a way. My mother found it, after a year of cunning search —