One day De Marke had just left Catharine alone in the library, with the sashes of the great bay-window open, when two women came by on their way to the front of the house. One was Mrs. Louis De Marke’s servant, who had disappeared the night after the wedding, and the other a comely little Irish woman, whose face Catharine instantly recognized. She sprang up with an exclamation of pleasant surprise and ran to the window.
“Mary Margaret—Mrs. Dillon!”
Mary Margaret and her companion turned, and came toward the window.
“Oh! is it there ye are, me darlint?” said the good-hearted woman, “with yer husband to the fore, and no thanks to anybody. Faix! but I’m glad to get a sight of yer beautiful countenance agin, and I’ve com’ all the way down here to give ye a taste of happiness that ye haven’t dreamed of. What do you say, darlint, to a child of yer own, just the beautifullest crathur?”
“Hush,” said Catharine, bending from the open casement, and reaching out her hand to Mary Margaret. “This is a cruel subject to jest on!”
“She isn’t joking, not she,” said Jane Kelly; “I’ve brought her down here, just to strengthen what I have to say, and what I never would have said on earth, if he there hadn’t proved to be another woman’s son. If that old Frenchwoman had been his mother, he might have searched till doomsday, and never found the little fellow after all.
“Catharine Lacy, I was your nurse at the hospital; I took the living child from your bosom, and placed the dead baby of Louisa Oakley in its place. You were raving, and did not know it. Don’t look so white and so frightened. I had an object. The old French fiend paid me for putting your child out of the way. I did not murder for her money; but I changed the infants, and reported yours dead. More than this, I changed the numbers and names over your cots, and that is why you are registered as dead, and buried, instead of the other.”
“But the child, my child!” cried Catharine.
“Mary Margaret took it to nurse.”
“Mary Margaret!”