“But his mother is dead, years ago.”
Again that cunning gleam broke into her eyes; but the woman did not speak.
“Have you no kind remembrance for my brother?” said the young man, on whom that gleam of the eye made no impression, “he has never wronged you.”
“Oh! yes, take that,” she said, pointing to a picture that stood near the door, with its face to the wall. “It has been his friend from first to last—tell him it nearly cost me my life. The crazy wretch worshipped the picture,—I knew that, and would have it. She came at me like a panther; we were on the shore; I ran for the boat and she after me into the water, knee-deep. The man pulled with all his might; but she held me by the throat, tore at me like a wolf. My foot got fast in the cross-beam of the boat, or she would have drowned me before their faces. The boatmen had to beat her off with their oars, and she let go; but left my ankle and foot wrenched and bruised till I have never had a minute’s rest till now—not a minute. Give him the picture, with my love. It’s cost me dear; but she hasn’t got it to pine and pray over. Give him the picture, I say; it’s all he will ever get from me.”
Louis De Marke listened to this wild speech, shocked and bewildered. To him it had no meaning, but it grieved him to find so much of bitterness and malice in what he thought to be the last ravings of an unrepentant soul, and that soul the one from which his own drew life.
“Oh! mother, calm yourself, try and talk more rationally; you are ill, very ill; once more I say to you this is the last conversation we shall ever hold together.”
“Son, do you believe this? On your soul, is it the truth?”
She spoke in a hoarse murmur. The artificial strength was leaving her in the very grasp of death.
“Mother, yes!”
The woman uttered a low, long wail, inexpressibly mournful.