At length she became composed; when, embracing his opportunity, though he had been severely tempted in the interval to let it rest for ever, he spoke again with cautious delicacy upon the fatal subject. She listened in silence. She heard him with calmness as he went on and explained to her the successive steps by which the exchange was effected, and unfolded to her, link by link, the connected chain of the witch's narrative. He convinced her—not of its probability, but of its possibility. Collecting all her strength of mind, she tried to contemplate the subject with composure. She succeeded: weighed it well, in all its parts and bearings; nicely balanced each particle, and sifted each doubtful circumstance. Suddenly she turned to him, and said eagerly, and with an eye kindling with hope,
"It may not be so, Robert! She may, in the agitation of the moment, when both were swathed, have caught up her own child!"
"At such a moment, above all, would a mother know her own!" he said, firmly, but looking as if he would, if he dared, still cherish a hope.
"Yes, yes; and she must, too, have seen it afterward," she said, in a tone of deep despondency. "But who told thee this fatal tale?" she asked, quickly.
"Elpsy, the sorceress!"
"Ha!" exclaimed the lady, turning pale. "I fear, then, it is too true! This fearful woman has knowledge of hidden and wondrous things through her unholy art. Oh, God! that she had used it to a better end! But, then, there may have been a mistake! Malice—her hatred of her species may have caused her to give the facts this frightful turn! Dreadful being! thus to loose, even by raising a doubt of thy birthright, my last hold on earthly happiness, and wreck all my hopes in thee. Her face ever has haunted me as if for evil! It seems to me as if I had seen it in the dreams of my childhood. I know not how it is, but I never looked upon her without presentiments of evil and vague sensations of suffering, as if her very presence was associated with scenes of terror. Now are they all, indeed, realized! But I will not give thee up, Robert, my son—my own son!" she cried, frantically! "I will cling to the hope that the fatal exchange was not made!"
He suffered her to embrace him again and again, and then, after a few moments' silence, and speaking in an indifferent tone, he said,
"Lady Lester! Was thy noble husband of fair complexion?"
"No, dark as the Spaniard's, yet it was exceedingly rich to the eye with its bright blood!" she said, with conjugal pride.
"Were his eyes blue?"