We started, and looked round. A woman, respectably attired, but whose features were partially hidden by a close bonnet that seemed formed to conceal the face, was standing immediately beside us. Could this be that wild wanderer who had accosted me in the park, and met me on the bridge when all but the outcasts of society were at home? I had no time left for closer examination—she tapped me gently on the shoulder—and, in a low voice, desiring me to follow, she mingled in the crowd. Mr. Hartley and I quietly obeyed the signal; while Mark Antony and the ratcatcher joined the rabble in the street, who were waiting to offer some unenviable tokens of the estimation in which Mr. Brown and his associates were holden, before they took a final departure for durance vile.
We kept the gipsy well in sight, and observed her turning into another public-house at no great distance from the Green Man. We entered it, and were conducted by the barmaid to a back apartment, here we found the fair one seated.
The latter term is not used unadvisedly; for a finer woman, of a certain age, could not have been found in the metropolis. Nothing of her former wild and sybil-looking air remained—the eye had lost its keen and searching glance—the voice was softened—the very manner seemed altered with the dress; and when she laid aside her bonnet, Mr. Hartley and I freely admitted that the face disclosed to us had once been positively beautiful. When the door was shut, she turned her dark intelligent eyes on mine, and regarded me in silence for a minute.
“Yes!” she said; “how striking is the likeness between the son and sire! and what painful recollections does that singular resemblance bring back! ay, though twenty long years of exile have passed away! But no more of this. Mr. O’Halloran, you see before you one who can hardly say whether she should love or hate the name. Time chills the deadliest enmities; and even jealousy and blighted hopes will own its soothing influence; and I, who should look upon you as an enemy, felt in your recent hour of trial all the agonizing uncertainty a mother only knows, when the child of her first affections is exposed to peril. With my early story, and wayward fate, it would be idle to detain you. None have passed through greater vicissitudes of fortune; none have sinned or suffered more than Mary Halligan!”
I started. “That name’s familiar!—Were you the peasant girl—”
“Through whose mistake Knockloftie, and all within its walls, were saved from violence and murder; I am that person. Ay, fallen, as I may now appear, I was innocent, admired, wooed, won, and deserted! Pshaw!—‘tis but a common tale in woman’s history! No matter—‘tis past—it seems a dream; but, O God, it is a fearful one! I have not, however, come here to speak about myself. I come to tender my poor services to the child—for, from the bottom of the heart of her he wronged, the father is forgiven! Wild as my career has been, used as I have been to startling occurrences, still, the events of the last few days appear to me rather the coinage of a distempered brain than actual realities. Never did Heaven’s anger fall so suddenly and severely on the guilty; and never was the innocent so miraculously preserved. Strange, that the same day on which a life commenced, should have been twice chosen to end it by secret violence!—and stranger yet, that the same hand, which in infancy designed to crush you in the cradle, in the very hour of manhood, but for Heaven’s mercy, would have consigned you to a bloody grave!”
“Who was the intended murderer?” we both eagerly demanded.
“He was one whose name is perfectly familiar to you. Did you ever hear the colonel speak of a person named Hacket?”
“A hundred times. He was the villain that would have betrayed the old castle and its inmates to a band of murderers. They assailed it on the first anniversary of my birth-night, and were bloodily repulsed. I often have heard my father execrate that scoundrel’s treachery. Another perished by his hand—”
“Stop! name him not. There were in the world two beings whom I regarded with divided love. One perished. Would that it had been by any other hand. I have forgotten—no, that were impossible—but I strive to banish from memory all that occurred upon that fatal night.”