"Speak—say quickly what you require of me," exclaimed Katherine; "and hasten to tell me of my parents—for in your letter you spoke of both my father and my mother."
As Katherine entertained not the slightest recollection of her father, all her thoughts had ever been fixed on the memory of her mother;—but when she coupled the two names together—when she found her lips pronouncing the sacred denominations of father and mother in the same breath, there arose in her soul such varied and overpowering emotions that she dissolved into a violent agony of weeping.
But that efflux of tears relieved the surcharged heart of the orphan; and, composing herself as quickly as she could, she exclaimed, "Speak, good woman—name your conditions: I am rich—and they shall be complied with,—so that you hasten to tell me of my parents!"
"Did your mother leave no papers behind her—no letters—no private documents of any kind?" inquired the old hag.
"Nothing,—nothing save the fragment of a note which she commenced when in a dying state, and which death did not permit her to finish," answered Katherine.
"And that fragment—did it suggest no trace—"
"Stay—I will repeat its contents to you," exclaimed Katherine: "the words are indelibly fixed upon my memory——Oh! how were it possible that I could ever forget them? Those words ran thus:—'Should my own gloomy presages prove true, and the warning of my medical attendant be well founded,—if, in a word, the hand of death be already extended to snatch me away thus in the prime of life, while my darling child is——:' there," continued Katherine, "is a blank, occasioned—alas! by the tears of my poor mother! Two or three lines are thus obliterated; and then appears a short—disjointed—but a most mysterious portion of a sentence, written thus:—'and inform Mr. Markham, whose abode is——.' There's not another word on the paper!" added the orphan.
"Markham—Markham!" repeated the hag, as if sorely troubled by some reminiscence; "she mentioned the name of Markham in the letter she wrote on her death-bed? Young lady, did you ever hear more of that Mr. Markham?"
"Inquiries were instituted at my mother's death," replied Kate; "but the Mr. Markham alluded to in the note could not be discovered. The name—the very name, however, seems to be of good omen to me; for one of that name,—who is now a noble of exalted rank, and the commander of a mighty army in a foreign land,—has been my best friend—my benefactor—my saviour. Yes—it is to Richard Markham——"
"Ah! now I comprehend the cause of your intimacy with Miss Monroe," said the hag, hastily: "she resides with her father at the house of Mr. Richard Markham. And so," she continued in a musing tone,—"and so that same Mr. Richard Markham is your friend—your benefactor?"