The words caught my mother’s ear, who had now recovered her recollection completely; and with an effort, which I had never before seen her make, to command her own feelings—an effort, for which I thank her, as I knew it arose from her strong affection for me, she calmly said, “I will bear that woman—that fiend, in my sight, a few minutes longer, for your sake, Harrington, till her confession be put in writing and signed: this will, I suppose, be necessary.”
“I desire to know, directly, what all this means?” said my father, speaking in a certain repressed tone, which we and which Fowler knew to be the symptom of his being on the point of breaking out into violent anger.
“Oh! sir,” said Fowler, “I have been a very sad sinner; but indeed I was not so much to blame as them that knew better, and ought to know better—that bribed and deceived me, and lured me by promises to do that—to say that—but indeed I was made to believe it was all to end in no harm—only a jest.”
“A jest! Oh, wretch!” cried my mother.
“I was a wretch, indeed, ma’am; but Lord Mowbray was, you’ll allow, the wickedest.”
“And at the moment he is dead,” said my father, “is this a time—”
Fowler, terrified to her inmost coward soul at the sight of the powerful indignation which appeared in my father’s eyes, made an attempt to throw herself at his feet, but he caught strong hold of her arm.
“Tell me the plain fact at once, woman.”
Now she literally could not speak; she knew my father was violent, and dreaded lest what she had to say should incense him beyond all bounds.
My mother rose, and said that she would tell the plain fact.