"He told me nothing—excepting that I was a coward!" He laughed scornfully.
"I think he is half mad with sorrow." She paused and laid her hand on Gilbert's. "His wife is dead,—your mother is dead,—with the child she bore him."
Gilbert's eyes alone changed, but under her palm Beatrix felt the sinews of his hand leap and the veins swell.
"Tell me quickly," he said.
"She was burned," continued Beatrix, in a tone of awe. "She made my father grind his people till they turned, and she made him hang the leader who spoke for them. Then all the yeomen and the bondmen rose, and they burned the castle, and your mother died with the child. But my father escaped alive. Now I am again his only child, and he wants me again."
Gilbert's head fell forward, as if he had received a blow, but he said nothing for a time, for he saw his mother's face; and he saw her not as when they had parted, but as he remembered her before that, when he had loved her above all things, not knowing what she was. In spite of all that had gone between, she came back to him as she had been, and the pain and the pity were real and great. But then he felt Beatrix's hand pressing his in sympathy, and it brought him again to the evil truth. He raised his head.
"She is better dead," he said bitterly. "Let us not speak of her any more. She was my mother."
He stared long at the river, and the sadness of his homeless and lonely state in the world began to come upon him, as it came often. Then a soft voice broke the spell, and the words answered his thoughts.
"We are not alone, you and I," it said, and the two small hands crept up shyly and clasped his neck, and the loving, pathetic face looked up to his. "Do not let him take me away!" she begged.
His hand pressed her head to his breast, and once more he kissed her hair.