“And while the mother slept in insensibility, thou didst bid me stifle the child, and say it was still-born, because thou wast as thy brother’s heir in possession of the property?”
“Why repeat this idle tale, it is all over and gone? Art thou alone? art thou sure there is none here?”
“Sure, yes, quite sure; none at least clothed in flesh and blood like ourselves, but how many unseen beings hover around us I know not.”
Sir John could not help trembling, there was such a ghastly realism in her words, and the fast decaying light made him long to leave the place.
“Well, thou didst it for love of thy foster son, and thou hast been fool enough to confess it to this meddling priest?”
“Not yet, I waited to see thee first, and tell thee what I really did.”
“Really did? didst thou not murder the babe?”
“Nay, I substituted a beggar’s dead brat from a gipsy camp, hard by, for thy brother’s heir, and showed thee its body, and thou didst blanch, but yet nerve thy coward soul to say ‘well done;’ meanwhile I hid the young heir, and when thou wert gone to court I restored the babe to the mother, bidding her flee the castle with it ere thou didst return.”
“Can this be true? How wilt thou prove it now?”