CHAPTER XXXVI.
SOME LESSONS LEARNED.
When Leonard Yorke seized the old woman in his strong grasp she flashed about, uttering a mad cry of rage and despair. One glance into the young man’s white, stern face and flashing eyes, and the wretch realized that she was at last unmasked, and her hideous purpose laid bare to the censorious gaze of the young man whose only parent she had been about to murder.
“You murderess!” panted Leonard, wildly, his grasp tightening upon the woman’s shoulder, “you miserable murderess! I know all at last! It is your work, all this! You are to blame that my mother lies here slowly dying! By the Heaven above me, I have a mind to choke the life from your body!”
The woman’s eyes fell guiltily from before his wrathful, burning gaze. With a groan of horror she sunk upon her knees at his feet.
“Oh, Mr. Leonard! Mr. Leonard!” she whined. “I’ve been here so long, and I’ve worked so faithfully——”
“Hush, you murderess!” he interrupted, sternly. “Nothing that you can say will save you from your just punishment. First, you shall confess your object. Why did you seek to take my mother’s life?”
Old Betty began to sob.
“Well, sir. I’ll confess the truth,” she moaned. “Mrs. Yorke knows where the papers are hid away in the east chamber; somewhere there, but no one can find them. I only wanted to frighten her into telling me; for those papers—well, sir—you would give a heap of money for them, to say nothing of what Miss Arleigh would give.”