"My lady left a letter behind her, with some money, and the Carset diamonds, which she charged me to deliver, with my own hands, here at the castle.
"She had fears about her daughter—anxieties, which I need not explain—and besought me to keep the little girl; to educate her, and conceal her identity until she was eighteen years old, when I, or my son, should take her back to England, and allow her to choose her own way of life.
"I had talked this matter over with my lady, and gave her a solemn promise to protect her child, and the honor of her name, with my life, if that were needed. The very night of her death Lady Hope gave all the papers necessary to the recognition of her child to my son. He brought them home, and, while the children were asleep, we two pledged ourselves to protect your child from everything that her mother feared, and to secure for her all that she hoped.
"My lord, we kept our oaths. He died, broken-hearted, under the terrible burden which we took on ourselves that night. I lived, carrying it with me, till my shoulders are bowed, and my hair white with old age.
"The next day, while she lay dead, a fire broke out in the house where we lived. Our rooms were high up; the flames and smoke mounted so suddenly that it was impossible for us to escape by the stairs. The two little girls had crept into a corner of the room, and sat crying there, with the fire and smoke rolling toward them. I had secured the box, in which were Lady Hope's jewels and papers, and swung it over my shoulders, then snatched up your child."
Here the two girls, who stood, pale and trembling, by the window, uttered a simultaneous cry.
"I remember! I remember!" they said, each to the other, then clung together and listened.
The old woman scarcely heeded this interruption.
Lord Hope looked toward the window, so bewildered that he could neither see nor hear anything distinctly.
Mrs. Yates went on: