Then she turned her still streaming eyes towards the stranger who spoke in so kind, so soothing, so convincing a manner; and she beheld, by the mellowed light of the lamps that burnt in the chamber, a female of lovely person, but clad in deep black, and wearing the peculiar cap which bespeaks the widow.
The respectability of this garb combined with the softness of the lady's tone and manner, and the sweet amiability of her fine countenance, to produce the most favourable impression upon the wretched Adeline,—wretched alike through her own misdeeds and those of others!
"You ask me who I am," answered the stranger:—"rather seek to know wherefore I am here! Compose yourself, and I will explain the latter mystery in a few words. This evening I received tidings—from an authority which I cannot doubt, but which I dare not name—of a fearful conspiracy that is in progress against you,—not only against you, but I fear also against your child."
"Oh! heavens—I begin to understand it all!" shrieked Lady Ravensworth, the presence of Gilbert Vernon and Anthony Tidkins in that mansion, and evidently leagued together, recurring to her mind. "But how did you hear this! how did you learn the terrible tidings which other circumstances proclaim so fatally to be, alas! too true?"
"Lady, ask me not for my authority," was the reply. "Were I to reveal it, I should incur the chance of ruining a source of intelligence which may enable me to frustrate other diabolical schemes that might be conceived, even as I hope to baffle the one that is now in progress against yourself. You are no doubt watched by enemies of a desperate character—one of whom has every thing to gain by the death of your child."
"Oh! you allude to Gilbert Vernon—my brother-in-law!" exclaimed Adeline. "He is already in this house—accompanied by his valet, who——"
She checked herself ere she uttered another word that might have led her new friend to marvel how she could possibly have obtained any previous insight into the character of that attendant upon her brother-in-law.
"And that valet, by all I have heard," said the strange lady, "is a man of the most fiend-like soul—the most remorseless disposition,—a man capable of every atrocity—every crime,—and who is so ready to accomplish any enormity for gain, that were there another Saviour to betray, he would become another Judas."
"Oh! what a picture you are drawing!" cried Lady Ravensworth, with a cold shudder—for she knew how much of that appalling description was true!
"It is not to intimidate you, that I am thus candid," was the reply; "but simply to convince you in what danger you are placed, and how deeply you need the assistance of a sincere friend."