What i have now to tell you of Mary is derived¹ from information obtained at a date in my life later by many years than any date of which I have written yet. Be pleased to remember this.

Dermody, the bailiff, possessed² relatives in London, of whom he occasionally spoke³, and relatives in Scotland, whom he never mentioned. My father had a strong prejudice against the Scotch⁴ nation. Dermody knew his master well enough to be aware that the prejudice might extend to him, if he spoke of his Scotch kindred. He was a discreet⁵ man, and he never mentioned them.

On leaving my father’s service, he had made his way, partly by land and partly by sea, to Glasgow — in which city his friends resided. With his character and his experience, Dermody was a man in a thousand to any master who was lucky enough to discover him. His friends bestirred themselves. In six weeks’ time he was placed in charge of a gentleman’s estate on the eastern coast of Scotland, and was comfortably established with his mother and his daughter in a new home.

The insulting language which my father had addressed to him had sunk deep in Dermody’s mind. He wrote privately⁶ to his relatives in London, telling them that he had found a new situation which suited him, and that he had his reasons for not at present mentioning his address. In this way he baffled the inquiries⁷ which my mother’s lawyers (failing to discover a trace of him in other directions) addressed to his London friends. Stung by his old master’s reproaches, he sacrificed his daughter and he sacrificed me — partly to his own sense of self-respect, partly to his conviction that the difference between us in rank made it his duty to check all further intercourse⁸ before it was too late.

Buried in their

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