'I walked with her yesterday, Deb; didn't I? Yes; under the trees at Enderby; and I found she loved me. Little witch! She was hard, hard to win; so coy, so whimsical! She had a gipsy lover too. I made short work of him.'
'Didst shoot him, father?'
Sir Vincent laughed aloud, then feigned to look greatly scandalised amid his mirth. 'Shoot him? Fie, fie, Deb! Ask me not what I did, child. Why, one day she cared for him, the next for me. I could not stand it. A Fleming too! The Flemings woo maidens honourably. 'Fore heaven, I made Kate my Lady Fleming—my sweet little wife Kate! But I let her go no more to the camp. Sometimes I think she pines. She talks sometimes about her mother, in her dreams—that old hag! My wife must give up all, and cleave to me. Kate, Kate! dear love!' Then he said no more, nor did Deborah; but she marvelled at what she had heard, and what could have recalled her mother so vividly.
It happened one afternoon a few days after this and their arrival at Lincoln, Dame Marjory entered with a pale face. 'My Lady Deb, there's a poor woman round there at the gates wantin' to see thee; she is very ill. She lies there; 'tis like she's dyin'; so Master Coleman thinks. She can't be moved away.'
'I will come,' cried Deborah. 'Send Coleman to father. I will speak to her.' Beautiful, pitiful, Deborah appeared in her long black robes to the vision of the dying woman, bending down to her. She was an old, old woman, with wild and wintry hair; death in her face, but life in her great burning eyes, and those were fixed on Deborah. Deborah started back. It was the gipsy! A hundred doubts and certainties rushed surging to her brain. The gipsy beckoned her nearer.
'Speak to her,' whispered old Marjory emphatically. 'Go nearer.' And then Marjory, standing by gaunt and grim, waved the other servants away.
Deborah kneeled and bent her ear to the dying woman's lips. 'Girl,' said the faint voice, 'I forgive and forget! Let me die like a woman, not like a dog. I am thy mother's mother, an' I have been round day an' night to seek thee. She cast me off—Kate Shaw, thy mother. Because she was my Lady Fleming, she forgot her old mother. I was the dirt under her feet. Thy servants turned me off, Mistress. But take me into your grand house an' let me die in peace.'
Deborah rose to her feet, and turned like a ghost on Marjory. 'Nurse,' she whispered, 'is this my grandmother?'
'Yes, Mistress Deborah; it is true.'
Then Deborah beckoned to the men, and bid them bear the dying woman in and lay her on a bed. And then Deborah, with Marjory on the other side, sat down beside her. She seemed almost gone; the breath came labouring. But the breeze that swept in at the open windows seemed to revive her. It blew on the long white locks straggling across the brow; on those glazing eyes, so dark, sunken, piteous—eyes that burned up again, and sought Deborah's face as the embers of a dying fire flicker up and throw into the room an unexpected light.