“Hold—hold! Whatever you do, swear not by Heaven;—that Heaven you will never see! What have you to do with Heaven, that you should record your blustering oaths in its pure annals? Swear not by Heaven, Andrew Britton, or you may provoke a vengeance that may be terrible even to you.”
“Tell me,” said Britton, in an evidently assumed tone of mildness, “what brought you to London?”
“A holier errand, Britton, than that which has brought you, God knows I came to save, but you came to destroy.”
“Save who?”
“The child! The child!”
“You speak in riddles, Maud. What child?”
“I am mad!” replied the woman. “I know I am mad, but I have not forgotten—no, no. I cannot tell how long ago it is, but I saw the child of the dead brought forth by the bleeding man!”
“You rave,” cried Britton.
“No—no; I had no clue to that young child. To wander in search of it was hopeless till—till I found that you, Andrew Britton, were on the move. So long as the sound of your hammer rose on the night air at Learmont, I stayed there,—I hovered round your dwelling.”
“You played the spy upon me?” cried Britton.