Here Philip’s step was heard returning hastily. He was pale, and looked a good deal excited, so that Madame de Selinville uttered a little cry, and exclaimed, ‘Ah! is it so dreadful then?’
‘No, no, Madame,’ said Philip, turning round, with a fervour and confidence he had never before shown. ‘On my word, there is nothing formidable. You see nothing—nothing but the Italia and the boy. The boy gazes into a vessel of some black liquid, and sees—sees there all you would have revealed. Ah!’
‘Then you believe?’ asked Madame de Selinville.
‘It cannot be false,’ answered Philip; ‘he told me everything. Things he could not have known. My very home, my father’s house, passed in review before that strange little blackamoor’s eyes; where I—though I would have given worlds to see it—beheld only the lamp mirrored in the dark pool.’
‘How do you know it was your father’s house?’ said Berenger.
‘I could not doubt. Just to test the fellow, I bade him ask for my native place. The little boy gazed, smiled, babbled his gibberish, pointed. The man said he spoke of a fair mansion among green fields and hills, “a grand cavalier embonpoint,”—those were his very words,—at the door, with a tankard in one hand. Ah! my dear father, why could not I see him too? But who could mistake him or the Manor?’
‘And did he speak of future as well as past?’ said Diane.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Philip, with more agitation. ‘Lady, that will you know for yourself.’
‘It was not dreadful?’ she said, rising.
‘Oh no!’ and Philip had become crimson, and hesitated; ‘certes, not dreadful. But—-I must not say more.’