Too much excited for a passive listener, I left them and entered Cora’s sitting room. This little chamber had a double interest to me now. It was doubtless the place of my birth. The furniture and ornaments so superior to the dwelling itself had been my mother’s. I stood by the window looking upon the lake which had filled her vision so many times. Sad thoughts crowded upon me as I walked to and fro in the room, determined not to interrupt Chaleco with my impatience, and yet panting to hear all those old people had to say of my parents. Directly Chaleco and the old people came in, and once more the closet containing those precious books was searched. A few letters from Lord Clare to my mother, were found; Chaleco seized them eagerly, and sat down to compare them with my mother’s journal, which he had never restored to me.
CHAPTER LIII.
CHALECO’S TRIUMPH.
We were in London, Chaleco, Cora and myself. The gipsy chief sat at a small table reading some pages of manuscript that had been a little before brought to him. Cora lay upon the sofa, with one white hand under her still whiter cheek, gazing with her great mournful eyes upon the dim wall opposite.
I was watching Chaleco; the burning fire in his eyes, the savage curl of triumph that now and then revealed his teeth, as we sometimes see in a noble-blooded dog, when his temper is up. This expression deepened and burned as he read on, leaf after leaf, to the end. He did not then relinquish the paper, but turned back, referring to passages and comparing them with others, sometimes remaining whole minutes pondering over a single line.
At last he laid the manuscript down, dashed his hand upon it with a violence that made the table shake, and turned his flashing eyes on me.
“It is so, Zana; it is so!”
“What is it you have been reading to yourself?” I inquired.
“Wait a minute—let me think it all over. Well, this paper is from the best solicitor known in the London courts. I laid your case before him, the Bible, some letters that I found among other books at the old sheep farmer’s, and my own knowledge.”
“Well,” I said, “what does it all amount to?”
“Nothing but this, my little Zana, Aurora’s child, the scouted, insulted, outraged gipsy girl is, beyond all peradventure, Countess of Clare.”