“What have I done, that I should lose you!” she cried, with a still-increasing fierceness. “What crime have I committed, that I should be doomed to a hell upon earth? He was conceived in sin and born in iniquity, even as I was; yet the God you call upon permits him to live happy, rich, honored, and prosperous, while I—oh! it maddens me to think of it! But I will have revenge!”—she added, while her fierce eyes blazed, and her long, bony hand clenched—“yes, fearful revenge! If I am doomed to perdition, I shall drag him down along with me!”
“Mother! mother! Do not talk so! Be calm!”
“Calm! With these flames, like eternal fires, raging in my heart and brain? Oh, for the hour when his life-blood shall cool their blazing!”
“Mother, you are going mad!” said the young man, almost sternly. “Unless you are calm, we must part.”
“Oh, yes! We will part to-morrow. You will go over the boundless sea with all the thieves, and murderers, and scum of London, and I—I will live for revenge. By-and-by you will kill yourself, and I will be hung for his murder.”
She laughed a dreary, cheerless laugh, while her eyes grew unnaturally bright with the fires of incipient insanity.
“Poor mother!” said the youth, sadly. “This is the hardest blow of all! Try and bear up, for my sake, mother. Did you see Lord De Courcy to-night?”
“I did. May Heaven’s heaviest curses light on him!” exclaimed the woman, passionately. “Oh! to think that he, that any man, should hold my son’s life in the hollow of his hand, while I am here, obliged to look on, powerless to avert the blow! May God’s worst vengeance light on him, here and hereafter!”
Her face was black with the terrific storm of inward passion; her eyes glaring, blazing, like those of a wild beast; her long, talon like fingers clenched until the nails sunk deep in the quivering flesh.
“Mother, did you stoop to sue for pardon for me tonight?” said the young man, while his brow contracted with a dark frown.