Bridget Kennedy was there before her, making a pretence of fumbling in the wardrobe, her head shaking, her lips working, her eyes blazing with repressed rage and malice.
"Is he there, madam, still?" she demanded, impetuously. "Is he torturing and maddening Master Hector with his tones and gestures? He!—he that ought to crouch among the bent grass and fern sooner than pass the other on the high road. Borrowing and begging, to lavish on his evil courses: he who could not pay us—not in red gold, but with his heart's blood—the woe he wrought. They had guileful, stony hearts, the Boswells, before they ever took to foreign lightness and wickedness: and evil to him who trafficked with them in life or death."
"Who is he, Bridget? I do not know him; I cannot understand," gasped Leslie.
"Don't ask me, madam—you, least of all."
"Tell me, Bridget, tell me," implored the girl, frightened, yet exasperated, catching the old woman's withered hands, and holding them fast.
"Don't ask me, madam," reiterated Bridget, sternly. "Better not."
"I will know; what do you mean? Oh, you hurt me, you hurt me! I will ask Hector Garret himself. I cannot bear this suspense!"
"Child, do you choose what you can bear? Beware!" menaced the nurse; then, as Leslie would have broken from her—
"Have it, then! He is the brother of that Alice Boswell who perished in the burning of Earlscraig nigh twenty years ago."
"Poor lady, Bridget," Leslie said, with a bewildered, excited sob. "Poor unhappy lady; but what has that to do with him, with me? I understand no better. Help me, Bridget Kennedy—a woman, like myself. I will not let you go."