"Maniac, thou liest!" exclaimed Clermistonlee, whose heart beat wildly. "I cannot believe this tale of a tub, which is told to affright me. And yet, how dare I reject it?—the ring—Walter—my God!"
"Ha! has Beatrix the wronged, the scorned, the despised, the neglected Beatrix, wrung your heart at last? Fool! fool! Did'st thou never suspect the volcano that slumbered here?" she exclaimed, laying her hand upon her heart. "Did'st thou never perceive the flame that smouldered in my breast—the yearnings, the throbbings, the fierce longing to be adequately revenged on thee who had brought me to ruin and madness, and had abandoned me to penury and privation? Wretch! 'tis twenty-five years since ye betrayed me. Time has rolled on—time, that soothes all sorrows and softens every affliction, and teaches us to forget the wrongs of the living—yea, and the virtues of the dead; and perhaps to wonder why we hated one and loved the other,—time, I say, has rolled on to many miserable years, until I have become the hideous thing I am, but it never lessened one tithe of my longing for vengeance for the thousand taunts and contumelies that succeeded my first sacrifice for thee. You say I am mad—perhaps I am—but mark me—a woman's sorrow passes like a summer cloudy but her vengeance endureth for ever!"
Clermistonlee smote his forehead, and Beatrix laughed like a hyæna.
"My God—unhappy Walter!" said Lilian in a voice that pierced the heart of him she abhorred to deem her husband. "Then she who saved and nursed thee on the field of Steinkirke was thy mother—thy mother, and she knew it not? Oh, this was the secret sentiment, the heaven-born thought that spoke within her and made her heart so mysteriously yearn towards thee. Unfortunate Walter! how deeply have we been wronged—how bitterly must we suffer!"
"And till now, thou accursed fiend, this terrible secret has been concealed from me!" said Clermistonlee furiously, as he half drew his sword.
Beatrix laughed and tossed her arms wildly.
"Oh, horror upon horror! woe upon woe!" said Lilian in a voice of the deepest anguish as she rung her hands, and, taking up her little infant from the cradle, kissed it tenderly on the forehead, and retired slowly from the room.
"Lilian—Lilian," cried her husband, "whither go ye, lady?"
"To solitude—to solitude," she murmured. "Any where to save me from my own terrible thoughts—anywhere to hide me from the deep disgrace you have brought upon me; to any place where never again the light of day shall find me."
Clermistonlee heard her light steps on the staircase, and they fell like a knell on his heart: impelled by some secret and mysterious impulse, he followed her to her own apartment, the door of which he had heard close behind her. There was no sound within it.