"You do not reckon," said Magdalen, "that the chief suffering falls, not on my brother, but on your daughter's son. Is not Anthony the very image of his mother? Has he not her eyes and hair—all the upper part of his countenance? Does not her blood run in his veins? You have desired revenge on my brother, and you have got it through the breaking to pieces of your own grandson."
Mistress Penwarne was silent. It was as Magdalen said.
"Yes, and whom does Bessie resemble most? She has none of the handsomeness of your Margaret. It is true that she is her child, but she has inherited the plain homeliness of the Cleverdons. Look at yonder picture over the mantel-shelf. That was drawn of me when about her age. Does she not so resemble me at that time that you would say she had taken nothing of the Penwarnes, that she was altogether and only Cleverdon? Yet to her will come Hall. She will be mistress there, and to her child it will descend, to the utter exclusion of Anthony. Nay, I cannot think that the judgment of God, to which thou appealest ever, is falling all to thy side in its weighted scale."
The old woman was about to answer when Anthony entered. He was pale, and his pallor reminded her of her daughter as the wan picture recalled Bessie. Mrs. Penwarne rose from her chair and stepped up to him, took him by both his hands, and looked him steadily in the face. As she did so great tears formed in her eyes and rolled down her wrinkled cheeks.
"Ah!" said she, seeing in him her dead daughter, and her voice quivered, "how hardly did the Master of Hall treat her, but Magdalen—aye, and Bessie—know that better than thou. He was rough and cruel, and now thou hast felt what his roughness and cruelty be—now thou canst understand how he behaved to thy poor mother; but thou art a man and able to go where thou wilt, fight thine own way through the world, carve for thyself thine own future. It was not so with my poor Margaret. She was linked to him—she could not escape, and he used his strength and authority and wealth to beat and to torment and break her. And Margaret had a spirit. Have you seen how a little dog is mended of lamb worrying? It is attached to an old ram—linked to it past escape, and at every moment the ram lets drive at the little creature with his horns, gets him under his feet and tramples him, kneels on him and kneads him with his knees, ripping at him all the while with his horns. Then, finally, the little dog is detached and taken away, covered with wounds and bruises, before the ram kills it. It was so with my Margaret, but she was no lamb-killer—only had a high spirit—and she was tied to that man, your father. He rent her away from Richard Malvine, whom she loved, just because it was his pleasure, and he broke her heart. Look here."
The old grandmother drew from her bosom a token, a silver crown-piece of Charles I., on which the King was figured mounted on horseback; but the coin was broken, and to her neck hung but one half.
"Look at this," said Mrs. Penwarne. "Here is the half-token that Richard Malvine gave to my daughter, and the other half he kept himself. That was the pledge that they belonged to each other. Yet Anthony Cleverdon of Hall would not have it so. He took her away, and on her marriage day she gave me the broken half-token. She had no right to retain that; but with her broken heart she could not part so readily. As if it were not enough that he had torn her away from the man she loved, your father left not a day to pass without ill-treating her in some way. He was jealous, because he thought her heart still hung to Richard Malvine; though, as God in heaven knows, she never failed in her duty to him, and strove faithfully to cast out from her heart every thought of the man she had loved, and to whom the Squire of Hall had made her unfaithful. As he could not win her love, he sought to crush her by ill-treatment. Now, O my Lord! how it must rejoice my poor Margaret, and Richard also, in Paradise, to think that their children should come together and be one—be one as they themselves never could be."
She ceased and sobbed. Then with shaking hands, she put the ribbon to which the broken token depended round Anthony's neck.
"Take this," she said. "I never thought to part with it; but it of right belongs now to thee. Take it as a pledge of thy mother's love, that her broken heart goes with thee to Willsworthy, and finds its rest there; and with it take my blessing."
Anthony bowed his head, and looked at the silver coin, rubbed very much, and placed it on his breast, inside his coat.