“I will try to tell you,” Miss Chance interposed. “Being a clergyman, you know who Deborah was? Very well. I am Deborah now; and I prophesy.” She pointed to the child. “Remember what I say, reverend sir! You will find the tigress-cub take after its mother.”
With those parting words, she favored us with a low curtsey, and left the room.
CHAPTER VI. THE DOCTOR DOUBTS.
The Minister looked at me in an absent manner; his attention seemed to have been wandering. “What was it Miss Chance said?” he asked.
Before I could speak, a friend’s voice at the door interrupted us. The Doctor, returning to me as he had promised, answered the Minister’s question in these words:
“I must have passed the person you mean, sir, as I was coming in here; and I heard her say: ‘You will find the tigress-cub take after its mother.’ If she had known how to put her meaning into good English, Miss Chance—that is the name you mentioned, I think—might have told you that the vices of the parents are inherited by the children. And the one particular parent she had in her mind,” the Doctor continued, gently patting the child’s cheek, “was no doubt the mother of this unfortunate little creature—who may, or may not, live to show you that she comes of a bad stock and inherits a wicked nature.”
I was on the point of protesting against my friend’s interpretation, when the Minister stopped me.
“Let me thank you, sir, for your explanation,” he said to the Doctor. “As soon as my mind is free, I will reflect on what you have said. Forgive me, Mr. Governor,” he went on, “if I leave you, now that I have placed the Prisoner’s confession in your hands. It has been an effort to me to say the little I have said, since I first entered this room. I can think of nothing but that unhappy criminal, and the death that she must die to-morrow.”
“Does she wish you to be present?” I asked.