"Years fled on—years of burning disappointment and ungratified passion. The little girl Rachel left to my care was handsome, clever and affectionate, and I loved her with a fierce love, such as I never felt before for anything of earth—and she loved me—a creature from whose corrupted nature, all living things seemed to start with abhorrence. I watched narrowly the young heir of Moncton, who led that smiling rose-bud by the hand, and loved her too, but not as I could have wished him to love her.
"Had I seen the least hope of his ever forming an attachment for his beautiful playmate, how different would have been my conduct towards him!
"Alice, was early made acquainted with the secret of his birth, and was encouraged by me, to use every innocent blandishment towards him, and even to hint that he was not her brother, in order to awaken a tenderer passion in his breast.
"His heart remained as cold as ice. His affections for Alice never exceeded the obligations of nature, due to her as his sister. They were not formed for each other and, again disappointed in my ambitious hopes, I vowed his destruction. At this time Sir Alexander sent him to school at York, and the man who lies grovelling on that bed, was made acquainted with his existence."
A heavy groan from Robert Moncton interrupted for a few minutes the old woman's narrative. She rose from her seat, took the lamp from the table, and bending over the sorry couch, regarded the rigid marble features of my uncle, with the same keen scrutiny that she had looked upon me in the garret of the old house in Hatton Garden.
"It was but a passing pang," said she, resuming her seat. "His ear is closed to all intelligible sounds."
I thought otherwise, but after rocking herself to and fro on her seat for a short space, she again fixed upon me her dark, searching, fiery eyes, and resumed her tale:—
"Robert Moncton bore the intelligence with more temper than I expected. Nor did he then propose any act of open violence towards the innocent object of our mutual hatred, but determined to destroy him in a more deliberate and less dangerous way. At that time I was not myself eager for his death, for my poor deluded, lost Alice, had not then formed the ill-fated attachment to Theophilus Moncton, which terminated in her broken heart and early grave—and which, in fact, has proved the destruction of all, and rendered the house of the destroyer as desolate as my own.
"At first I could not believe that the attachment of my poor girl to Theophilus was sincere, but when I was at length convinced that both were in earnest, my long withered hopes revived. I saw her in idea, already mistress of the Hall, and often in private called her Lady Moncton.
"I despised the surly wretch, whom unfortunately she only loved too well, and looked upon his union with my grandchild as a necessary evil, through which she could alone reach the summit of my ambitious wishes.