"Then Hope took her from you by force?" questioned the countess. "Where is your son, Yates? He was wrong to permit it!"
"With my young lady."
"Dead! Then you, also, are childless?"
Hannah Yates remembered how the news of her bereavement had reached her in that stone cell which was cold as a grave, and shuddered while the lady in her palace questioned her. Then the old prison-look fell upon her, and she sat motionless, with her eyes upon the floor, saying nothing. How could she explain to that proud lady the bondage in which she had been held?
"Ah! if you had come earlier," said the countess, "the child of my child might have been here! That man would not have dared to keep her! She would not have been taught to return my advances with insolence by his evil wife."
"I could not come before," repeated the old woman, humbly.
"And now it may be too late."
"God forbid!" said the old woman. "No! no! He will show me how to complete my task. It is for that I have been kept alive."
"Yates, you are brave and faithful. I was wrong to question you so. Forgive me, old servant."
Mrs. Yates took the child-like hand held out to her and pressed it to her lips.