Read Maulever Hall for Free Online Page A

two pairs of soft slippers. Then came a Bible with no name in it and a rather dilapidated volume of Shakespeare’s plays, equally without a clue as to its owner.
    Mrs. Mauleverer gave an impatient sigh. “Really,” she said, “one might think you had gone out of your way to make sure there was no clue to your name.”
    “Yes.” Martha gave Marianne another of her strange looks. “ One really might. But have you noticed something else, ma’am? There is everything else that a nursemaid, or someone of that kind might need, but what about the child’s clothes? Where are his socks? His little drawers? His night things? One would think his clothes had been snatched up in haste and pushed on to the top of the box. Did you notice how badly they were packed?” She shook out a frilled shirt as she spoke. “While the other things were packed as exquisitely as if they had been silks and satins.”
    “Yes, yes,” said Mrs. Mauleverer, “it is quite true. Now what can we deduce from that?” She looked eagerly at Marianne, as if expecting her to be inspired.
    But it was Martha who answered. “It might mean that miss there has run away with her employer’s child on who knows what sudden impulse. Revenge, perhaps, for some slight? You will see, there will be a hue and cry out directly.” The black eyes snapped maliciously at Marianne.
    “I don’t believe it.” But Mrs. Mauleverer’s voice lacked conviction.
    “Or perhaps,” Martha went on ruthlessly, “she is a member of some gang of robbers—that would account for there being no name on anything. Or maybe it’s a kidnaping: the poor little boy to be held to ransom, till his sorrowing parents pay their fortune for his release.”
    Marianne pulled herself upright in the bed. “It’s not true,” she said. “I’m not like that.” The room whirled before her eyes. But she could not, would not let herself faint. This accusation, so dangerously like the vicar’s, must be answered at once. “The idea is absurd,” she went on more steadily. “If I am part of a gang, where are the rest of them? Besides, how would that account for the way the box was packed? If I had kidnaped the child, surely I would have had sense enough to do it at leisure? After all, from the evidence of the box, I was living in the same house as him. And as for your suggestion that I am a robber”—she was speaking directly to Martha now—“where, pray, is my loot?”
    “Precisely.” Mrs. Mauleverer sounded relieved. She was not, Marianne had already recognized, a woman of much intellectual capacity and was liable to take her cue from the strongest, maybe even the loudest arguer.
    Luckily, Gibbs chose this moment to come out strongly on Marianne’s side: “I’ve never heard such a farrago of nonsense in my life. I’d as soon believe myself capable of such wickedness as Miss Lamb. And I’ve nursed her night and day, and should know. She’s a lady, if ever I saw one.”
    “Of course she is,” said Mrs. Mauleverer as if that settled it. “Anyone who can see anything, can see that.”
    For the first time, Marianne slept deep and dreamlessly that night. Waking early, she lay for a while, listening to the first twitterings of sparrows outside and savoring a new sensation. She felt well. Yesterday’s lassitude, and its terrors seemed to be gone together. She stretched luxuriously between linen sheets, giving herself up, for a moment, to the illusion of well being. Her head was clear; she felt ravenously hungry; she remembered—nothing.
    The realization had her out of bed in a bound. Yesterday, she had somehow assumed that when her strength came back, her memory would come too. Today showed her mistake. “Maulever Hall,” she told herself, coaxing memory backward. Mrs. Mauleverer ... the vicarage ... and then, the moor—and nothing. The past, then, still a blank. What of the present? Shivering a little, she moved to the window and drew back the heavy curtains. Early sunlight on a