"Yes, yes," exclaimed Mrs. Arbuthnot, still wildly sobbing, and holding the terrified boy still strained in her embrace, as if she feared he might be wrenched from her by force. "Any thing—pay him any thing!"
At this moment, chancing to look toward the door of the apartment, I saw that it was partially opened, and that Danby's wife was listening there. What might that mean? But what of helpful meaning in such a case could it have?
"Be it so, love," said Mr. Arbuthnot, soothingly. "Danby, call to-morrow at the Park. And now, begone at once."
"I was thinking," resumed the rascal with swelling audacity, "that we might as well at the same time come to some permanent arrangement upon black and white. But never mind: I can always put the screw on; unless, indeed, you get tired of the young gentleman, and in that case, I doubt not, he will prove a dutiful and affectionate son—Ah, devil! What do you here? Begone, or I'll murder you! Begone, do you hear?"
His wife had entered, and silently confronted him. "Your threats, evil man," replied the woman quietly, "have no terrors for me now. My son is beyond your reach. Oh, Mrs. Arbuthnot," she added, turning toward and addressing that lady, "believe not—"
Her husband sprang at her with the bound of a panther. "Silence! Go home, or I'll strangle—" His own utterance was arrested by the fierce grasp of Mr. Arbuthnot, who seized him by the throat, and hurled him to the further end of the room. "Speak on, woman; and quick! quick! What have you to say?"
"That your son, dearest lady," she answered, throwing herself at Mrs. Arbuthnot's feet, "is as truly your own child as ever son born of woman!"
That shout of half-fearful triumph seems even now as I write to ring in my ears! I felt that the woman's words were words of truth, but I could not see distinctly: the room whirled round, and the lights danced before my eyes, but I could hear through all the choking ecstasy of the mother, and the fury of the baffled felon.
"The letter," continued Mrs. Danby, "which my husband found and opened, would have informed you, sir, of the swiftly approaching death of my child, and that yours had been carefully kept beyond the reach of contagion. The letter you received was written without my knowledge or consent. True it is that, terrified by my husband's threats, and in some measure reconciled to the wicked imposition by knowing that, after all, the right child would be in his right place, I afterward lent myself to Danby's evil purposes. But I chiefly feared for my son, whom I fully believed he would not have scrupled to make away with in revenge for my exposing his profitable fraud. I have sinned; I can hardly hope to be forgiven, but I have now told the sacred truth."