The Lady Stradawn sank again into the chair, from which the sudden impulse of hope had so energetically raised her, and, groaning deeply, she relapsed into her former state of deathlike stillness, broken only by the long drawn sob that at certain intervals convulsed her whole frame.
“Mother!” said Murdoch Stewart, after a pause; “Where are all the fruits of that career of crime for which thou nursed me as an infant, tutored me as a boy, and prompted me as a man? Have I not followed thy bidding through deceit, robbery, and murder, and where is now my reward?—Thine is locked up there in that secret cabinet of glittering toys, which to-morrow thou must leave, to go out to be hanged by the neck on the gallows-tree, with the son, whom thou wouldst have had Lord of the Aven, grinning at thee like a caitiff cur from the farther end of its beam—”
“Oh!—Oh—ho!” cried the agonized woman, shaken through every limb by the palsy of her fears; “Is there no—no deliverance for us?”
“Yes,” said Murdoch Stewart, calmly; “yes, there is a deliverance, and a speedy one too.”
“Oh, name it!” cried the frantic woman; “Oh, name it! and quickly let us avail ourselves of it!”
“Here it is,” said Murdoch Stewart, quietly taking a small paper packet from his bosom; “Here it is, mother. A few small pinches of this powder, mingled in a cup of that wine, will snatch us both from the torture of being made a disgraceful public spectacle to-morrow—of being gazed at by the vulgar eyes, and pointed at by the vile fingers of those wretched serfs, and their grovelling mates and spawn, whom, a little better luck and better fortune for us, had by that time made the abject slaves of our will. See! here it is mingled, already it is dissolved, and now the draught is potent. Good mother, I pledge thee,” said he, drinking down half of what the goblet contained; “and now here is thy share.”
“No,—no,—no!—I cannot!—no, I cannot!” cried the Lady Stradawn, with frantic horror in her averted eyes.
“Then do I tell thee, mother mine,” said Murdoch Stewart sternly; “thou hast not trained me up to deal in deeds of blood and death for naught. I shall never suffer thy womanish fears to bring the disgrace of the gallows upon thee. I love thee too much for that. See here, good mother! ’tis but a choice of deaths. Here is a concealed dagger, look you. Say! wouldst thou bring one more murder—the murder of a mother on my already overburdened soul, to sink it deeper in that sea of torment, to which these priests would fain have us believe that those, who, like us, have used the wit and the strength with which they have been gifted, for bettering their own condition in this world, must hasten from hence. Drink! or by every fiend that suffers there, thou diest in the instant!”
The Lady Stradawn glared at her son with a vacant stare, as if all reason had fled from her. She took the cup mechanically from his hand, and drained it to the bottom.
“What hast thou done?” cried the man-at-arms, who had been brought to the door by the violent tone of some of Murdoch Stewart’s last words, and who rushed in just as the Lady Stradawn had swallowed the poison.