Lady Edith did not see the uncontrollable emotion of her young friend. She was singing with her eyes closed, but tears were stealing down her pale cheeks. She held little Alan tightly clasped to her breast, and perhaps in fancy she was back in the long ago, clasping to her heart the child long dead. Her brother, watching her with deep emotion, felt that it was so.
Once Thea started from her chair with outstretched arms and a yearning gesture, as if she would throw herself at the singer’s feet; but she caught Lord Stuart’s glance and shrunk back.
“What is it, dear child?” he whispered, drawing near.
She clung to him with both hands, and her face seemed irradiated with supernal light, it grew so tender.
“Her face, her voice, her song—they are like my lost mother’s. They go to my heart!” she murmured.
Then the half smile faded, and she sunk back into her chair, weeping silently. She had suddenly remembered Norman’s sensitive shrinking from the thought of strangers knowing her sad story. She must not confide to Lord Stuart her bitter cause for tears.
CHAPTER LXX.
It was February now, and a month had passed since Camille had returned to Verelands, bringing trouble and sorrow in her train. She was there still, and she began to believe that she was quite safe in her wickedness, as Norman de Vere had not yet betrayed her to the law for the murder of Robert Lacy.
“He will not do it, because the old love makes me sacred in his eyes,” she thought, triumphantly, little dreaming that it was for his mother’s sake Norman kept silence. He was only waiting until she should be strong enough to bear the news that Camille, in whom she had always believed, whose part she had always taken, was a cruel murderess.
“I would have spared her still, as I have spared her all these years, if she had let me—but she has been merciless!” he thought, remembering all that his darlings had suffered at her vindictive hands; and he knew that the time of her betrayal must come soon, for to-day his mother was strong enough to be removed from the cabin to Verelands.