"Tell me why you stole my child!"
"It won't do you any good to find out now. She won't never come back any more!" she muttered stubbornly.
He groaned in anguish, but reiterated:
"I insist on having the truth. Answer my question."
"Tell him the truth, you she devil!" growled Cisneros, pinching her arm as she huddled closer to his side.
She whined with pain, but she was mastered; she did not dare persist in her obstinacy.
So she whimpered:
"My daughter Cora stole the baby from your wife's breast, and she loved it so that I daren't take it away, lest she should die. So I let her keep it, and when her own child came she wouldn't never have naught to do with it, but clung to the other one, poor, crazy thing! So I thought I would raise them as twins, but when Doctor Jay sent me to get one from the foundling asylum in its place, the devil tempted me to keep your baby because Cora loved it so, and I put my own grandchild in your wife's arms, hoping you wouldn't find out the truth, and that Cora's child would be a great rich lady. My poor girl went stark mad, and they put her in the crazy asylum for life, but I was ashamed of the disgrace. I told every one she had run away again to be an actress. And I kept the baby to work for me till it grew a great girl, with a face like an angel, and a heart like an angel, too, but somehow I always hated her, because I had a bad heart!"
"And then your grandchild found out the truth, and came and told you to kill Liane?" cried her accuser.
"How did you know that?" she demanded, shrinking in deadly fear.