“Knew him well?” she answered; then breaking into Spanish, she murmured among her tears, “too well—too well for him or for us.”
She took my face between her hands, and gazed down upon it with mournful tenderness.
“My bird,” she murmured, “ask me no questions about the earl—my heart is full to-night. It is not you that sits at my feet, but another—another. Oh, what became of her?—what became of her? More than ten years, and we have no answer to give him.”
“That person—she who sits in my place overshadows me in your heart—is it my mother?” I questioned, in a whisper.
“The God of heaven only knows!” she answered passionately. “Do not question me, child, for the sound of those bells has unlocked sad memories—I have no control over myself—I shall say forbidden things. Hush, hush, let me listen.”
I kept my head upon her lap, brooding in silence over her words. I could wait, but a stern determination to know all, to solve the mysteriousness that surrounded me, filled my being. I thirsted for entire knowledge regarding myself, and resolved to wrench it from its keepers, whatever pain it might bring or give.
But after Maria had wept awhile, she grew calm and circumspect. I could feed my craving with no more of her passionate outbreaks. We sat together till deep in the night, conversing in abrupt snatches, but I gathered nothing from what she said to confirm my suspicion that at least a portion of my history was in her keeping.
Turner did not come back that night, nor till deep in the next morning. When he did appear it was with a step of lead, and with trouble in his heavy eyes. Maria met him at the door, and a few hasty words passed between them before he entered.
As they came in I heard her say, as if repeating the word after him, “dying! not that—oh, not that!”
“It has killed him at last—I knew it—I foresaw it from the first,” answered Turner, bitterly. “The fiends—would to heaven they had all been smothered in their holes before he”——