She looked astonished. “That was her name. But, sir, how came you to be so well acquainted with it? It was a mystery to the whole household at Skipford Court. She was some beautiful young woman whom he lured away from her protectors while he was abroad. I have heard said he practised some terrible deceit upon her, and when she came to know it, she was neither to have nor to hold, but rushed off from his very arms, and threw herself into a rapid stream and was drowned. It stung him deep with remorse, but I used to think the remembrance of the mother’s cruel death made him love the child yet dearer.”
I told her, as briefly as might be, of my researches after the descendant and heir of the Fitzgeralds of Kildoon, and added—something of my old lawyer spirit returning into me for the moment—that I had no doubt but that we should prove Lucy to be by right possessed of large estates in Ireland.
No flush came over her gray face; no light into her eyes. “And what is all the wealth in the whole world to that poor girl?” she said. “It will not free her from the ghastly bewitchment which persecutes her. As for money, what a pitiful thing it is! it cannot touch her.”
“No more can the Evil Creature harm her,” I said. “Her holy nature dwells apart, and cannot be defiled or stained by all the devilish arts in the whole world.”
“True! but it is a cruel fate to know that all shrink from her, sooner or later, as from one possessed—accursed.”
“How came it to pass?” I asked.
“Nay, I know not. Old rumours there are, that were bruited through the household at Skipford.”
“Tell me,” I demanded.
“They came from servants, who would fain account for every thing. They say that, many years ago, Mr. Gisborne killed a dog belonging to an old witch at Coldholme; that she cursed, with a dreadful and mysterious curse, the creature, whatever it might be, that he should love best; and that it struck so deeply into his heart that for years he kept himself aloof from any temptation to love aught. But who could help loving Lucy?”
“You never heard the witch’s name?” I gasped.