"I tell you, father John," interrupted Isabella, "that even at this moment a leader of the rebels is before the council—and ere to-morrow's sun shall set, the turbulent villeins will be either hanged or driven back—and you will be beheaded!"
"Is the betrayer a captive?" asked the monk; and he fixed an anxious searching glance on the baroness.
"No, the man came voluntarily——"
Isabella paused. The monk, however, did not reply; but she inferred, from a sort of quivering of the upper lip, that her information affected him more deeply than he chose to tell. She passed one hand across her forehead, and then, clasping them both, and resting them upon her knees, looked earnestly at John Ball, and said, impressively—
"The rebels are betrayed, and you are condemned; but, if you will hearken to my request, this hour shall free you from prison:—Will you, will you tell me of my lost child?"
"Lady," said the monk in a stern voice, "think you so meanly of John Ball that he would do for a bribe what he would not do for justice sake? The time was when ye might have known, but ye took not counsel——"
"Then he lives!" said Isabella, in a suppressed shriek; and she bent her head on her bosom, and covered her face with her hands.
For a minute she sat thus, and then slowly removing her hands, and raising up her pale and tearful face, said tremulously, and in so low a tone as to be scarcely audible, "My child then does live?"
"Baroness de Boteler, I said not that your child lives."
"Oh, father John, torture me not so," said she, with hysterical eagerness. "Oh, tell me not that I have a living son, and then bid me look upon the grave. Oh, lead me to my child, or even give assurance that he lives, and you shall be freed; and if he whom I suspect did the deed, he shall be pardoned and enriched."