“And is it possible to believe, then, that my brother, out of avarice to grasp at my inheritance, would lend himself to such a base and dreadful stratagem?”
“Your mother believed it,” said the old beldam with a fiendish laugh—“it was nae plot of my making; but what they did or said I will not say, because I did not hear. Lang and sair they consulted in the black wainscot dressing-room; and when your brother passed through the room where I was waiting, it seemed to me (and I have often thought sae since syne) that the fire of hell was in his cheek and een. But he had left some of it with his mother, at ony rate. She entered the room like a woman demented, and the first words she spoke were, Elspeth Cheyne, did you ever pull a new-budded flower?’ I answered, as ye may believe, that I often had. Then,’ said she, ye will ken the better how to blight the spurious and heretical blossom that has sprung forth this night to disgrace my father’s noble house—See here;’—(and she gave me a golden bodkin)—nothing but gold must shed the blood of Glenallan. This child is already as one of the dead, and since thou and Teresa alone ken that it lives, let it be dealt upon as ye will answer to me!’ and she turned away in her fury, and left me with the bodkin in my hand.—Here it is; that and the ring of Miss Neville, are a’ I hae preserved of my ill-gotten gear—for muckle was the gear I got. And weel hae I keepit the secret, but no for the gowd or gear either.”
Her long and bony hand held out to Lord Glenallan a gold bodkin, down which in fancy he saw the blood of his infant trickling.
“Wretch! had you the heart?”
“I kenna if I could hae had it or no. I returned to my cottage without feeling the ground that I trode on; but Teresa and the child were gane— a’ that was alive was gane—naething left but the lifeless corpse.”
“And did you never learn my infant’s fate?”
“I could but guess. I have tauld ye your mother’s purpose, and I ken Teresa was a fiend. She was never mair seen in Scotland, and I have heard that she returned to her ain land. A dark curtain has fa’en ower the past, and the few that witnessed ony part of it could only surmise something of seduction and suicide. You yourself”—
“I know—I know it all,” answered the Earl.
“You indeed know all that I can say—And now, heir of Glenallan, can you forgive me?”