She darted a keen look at him—a look in which question and surprise were both expressed.
‘Moya,’ he went on, ‘since I saw you last night I’ve no’ closed my eyes for thinking o’ you and the lad your son. Eh, woman, but it’s clear impossible that after that one glimpse o’ his bonny face, and that one sound o’ his voice, ye should be content to gang back to solitude—it’s clear impossible! Let me tell him you’re alive and near him. He’s alone, too, noo! His place is by your side; your duty is to comfort him under the trouble he’s suffering, ye ken that weel?’
‘Mr. Peebles,’ said Moya steadily, ‘the path of duty is not always plain; but I’m going to clear mine if I can, by your help. God knows my very bones are full of desire for the child I love; I was near crying out who I was last night when I kissed him; but I’ve borne the bitter pain of solitude now for eighteen years, and sure my time here will not be so long. I’ll bear it to the end rather than disgrace and shame my child!’
‘But, Moya, he kens!’ cried Peebles. ‘He kens you were not married to his father. I winna say but, if he had never learned that, ye wad no’ be in the right to keep apart from him; but he knows it. He’s cast off his father; he has barely a friend in the world, barring me, and how can I help him. He has need o’ ye! Ye’ll heal his sair heart, and he’ll love ye and cherish ye and comfort your declining years.’
Moya shook her head.
‘He’s young,’ she replied, with a world of meaning in her tone. ‘A heart as young as his won’t break for such a trouble as he’s suffering now. He’ll go out into the big world, where the shame’s not known, and win his way. What would I be to him—a nameless vagabond, a poor, ignorant ould woman! I should only kape him down and disgrace him. No; ye must tell Desmond nothing—yet. Ye asked me just now,’ she went on after a pause, ‘if I had no other reason to come here afther all these years but just to see my boy?’
‘Weel?’ asked Peebles.
‘I had—I had another reason, or I’d have resisted the temptation now as I have fought it down all that long, dreary time. I’ve a question to ask ye, Mr. Peebles?’ She paused there for so long a time that the old man snapped out suddenly, with excusable irritation:
‘Weel, weel, lassie! What is’t?’
‘There’s so much depends on the answer that I hardly dare to ask,’ said Moya, with a voice suddenly gone tremulous. ‘Tell me,’ she continued, after another pause, ‘if ye know a gintleman in this part of the counthry that calls himself Blake—one Patrick Blake, of Blake’s Hall?’