"You are a fool to feel the least trouble about him," said Dinah. "There, he is again insensible; our efforts to bring him to his senses will only make matters worse. Listen to me, Geoffrey Moncton, I have a burden on my conscience I would fain remove, and which it is necessary that you should know. Remember what I told you when we last met. That the next time we saw each other, my secret and yours would be of equal value."
DINAH'S CONFESSION.
"It is an ill wind, they say, Geoffrey Moncton, which blows no good to any one. Had the son of Sir Alexander Moncton lived, you would have retained your original insignificance. It is from my guilt that you derive a clear title to the lands and honours which by death he lost."
I know not why, but as she said this, a cold chill crept through me. I almost wished that she would leave the terrible tale she had to tell untold. I felt that whatever its import might be, that it boded me no good. My situation was intensely exciting, and made me alive to the most superstitious impressions. It was altogether the most important epoch in my life.
Seated at the foot of that miserable bed, the ghastly face of the wounded man, just revealed by the sickly light of a miserable candle, looked stark, rigid, and ghost-like, to all outward appearance, already dead. And that horrible hag, with her witch-like face, with its grim smile, standing between me and the clear beams of the moon, which bathed in a silvery light the floor of that squalid room, and threw fantastic arabesques over the time-stained walls, glanced upon me like some foul visitant from the infernal abyss.
The hour was solemn midnight, when the dead are said to awake in their graves, and wander forth until the second crowing of the bird of dawn. I felt its mysterious influence steal over my senses, and rob me of my usual courage, and I leant forward, to shut out the ghastly scene, and covered my face with my hands.
Every word which Dinah uttered fell upon my ear with terrible distinctness, as she continued her revelations of the past.
"My daughter, Rachel, by some strange fatality had won the regard of her delicate rival, Lady Moncton, who seemed to feel a perverse pleasure in loading her with favours. Whether she knew of the attachment which had existed between her and Sir Alexander is a secret. Perhaps she did not, and was only struck with the beauty and elegance of the huntsman's wife, which was certainly very unusual in a person of her humble parentage. Be that as it may, she deemed her worthy of the highest trust which one woman, can repose in another—the charge of her infant son, and that son the heir of a vast estate.
"Rachel was not insensible to the magnitude of the confidence reposed in her; and for the first six months of the infant's life, she performed her duty conscientiously, and bestowed upon her nurse-child the most devoted care.