Heaven be merciful to his soul!"

"And I am that babe?"

"Thou art, my son!" she said, affectionately.

"I am not!" he cried, fiercely.

"Not my son?"

"_Not thy son!_"

"What mean you, insolent boy?"

"In one word, I will tell thee. The guilty paramour of that woman having resolved to put out of the world the living witness of the wrong he had done her, threatened also her life when she refused to surrender it.

Prompted by the instinct of maternal love to save it, she laid it, while thou wert in a state of insensibility, by thy side, and gave thine to him, palming it off as her own, which, by this stratagem, was saved--and still lives. _I am_ HE!"

"Robert of Lester!" cried the lady, rising up and fixing her piercing eyes, bright with unwonted fire, upon his face, "mock me not; spare thy mother's heart!"

"Before G.o.d I speak truly. I am _not_ thy son."

"Holy Virgin! Mercy, Heaven! mercy!" shrieked the lady, and fell nearly lifeless into his arms.

For a few seconds there was a deep silence, like that of death, throughout that little chamber. He had not antic.i.p.ated this! Absorbed in the contemplation of his own misery, he had not thought of the blow he should inflict, by the disclosure of the dreadful secret, upon the mind of Lady Lester. It suddenly occurred to him that there was yet a balm in the existence of her true son which might heal the wound he had made.

Filial affection caused him immediately to address, and, by touching this chord, endeavour to restore her once more to life and hope.

"Lady!" he said, in a hoa.r.s.e tone, that--so deep were the feelings that governed it--startled even himself.

"Ha! Robert! my son!" she cried, standing up and looking wildly in his face; "what is this I have heard? Is it a dream--some terrific dream?"

"Thou hast not dreamed, lady," he said, sadly.

"No, I have not," she cried, with energy, and with the sudden return of all her faculties; "no, I have heard thy lips deny me. Thou hast said I am not thy mother--that thou art not my own child!"

"Do you remember the tale I have told you, lady?" he asked, calmly.

"Remember? each word is seared into my heart!"

"And do you believe me to be your son?"

"Believe? believe! I know not what to believe. What should I believe! I believe thou art my own boy--mine, mine, _mine_!"

As she spoke she threw her arms with frantic wildness about his neck, and hugged him convulsively to her bosom.

"Lady, 'tis vain to shut your eyes to the truth. I am not your son--but your son lives!"

"He does, he does live, and I clasp him to my heart," she cried, energetically, folding him closer to her bosom.

"Nay--"

"Nay--_nay_, but I _will_ hold thee! they shall not tear thee from me!

No, no! they must take my heart too, for its strings are bound all about thee, and thou art tied too long and too strong to it by the thousand chords of a mother's love to be parted from it now. Ha, ha! They shall not part us! Shall they, boy?"

He looked up into her face and saw that her mind wandered; that reason was falling from its throne!

"Mother!" he said, in tones of gentle persuasion: "mother!" and he affectionately kissed her cheeks; "mother!" he repeated a third time, in the most touching tones of filial love--"I am, I will be, your own dear son!"

The softer feelings of her soul came back; all the mother rushed from the heart to the eyes; and dissolved, melted by his appeal, she burst into tears, and wept freely and long upon his shoulder.

At length she became composed; when, embracing his opportunity, though he had been severely tempted in the interval to let it rest for ever, he spoke again with cautious delicacy upon the fatal subject. She listened in silence. She heard him with calmness as he went on and explained to her the successive steps by which the exchange was effected, and unfolded to her, link by link, the connected chain of the witch's narrative. He convinced her--not of its probability, but of its possibility. Collecting all her strength of mind, she tried to contemplate the subject with composure. She succeeded: weighed it well, in all its parts and bearings; nicely balanced each particle, and sifted each doubtful circ.u.mstance. Suddenly she turned to him, and said eagerly, and with an eye kindling with hope,

"It may not be so, Robert! She may, in the agitation of the moment, when both were swathed, have caught up her own child!"

"At such a moment, above all, would a mother know her own!" he said, firmly, but looking as if he would, if he dared, still cherish a hope.

"Yes, yes; and she must, too, have seen it afterward," she said, in a tone of deep despondency. "But who told thee this fatal tale?" she asked, quickly.

"Elpsy, the sorceress!"

"Ha!" exclaimed the lady, turning pale. "I fear, then, it is too true!

This fearful woman has knowledge of hidden and wondrous things through her unholy art. Oh, G.o.d! that she had used it to a better end! But, then, there may have been a mistake! Malice--her hatred of her species may have caused her to give the facts this frightful turn! Dreadful being! thus to loose, even by raising a doubt of thy birthright, my last hold on earthly happiness, and wreck all my hopes in thee. Her face ever has haunted me as if for evil! It seems to me as if I had seen it in the dreams of my childhood. I know not how it is, but I never looked upon her without presentiments of evil and vague sensations of suffering, as if her very presence was a.s.sociated with scenes of terror. Now are they all, indeed, realized! But I will not give thee up, Robert, my son--my own son!" she cried, frantically! "I will cling to the hope that the fatal exchange was not made!"

He suffered her to embrace him again and again, and then, after a few moments' silence, and speaking in an indifferent tone, he said,

"Lady Lester! Was thy n.o.ble husband of fair complexion?"

"No, dark as the Spaniard's, yet it was exceedingly rich to the eye with its bright blood!" she said, with conjugal pride.

"Were his eyes blue?"

"Black as night, large and staglike, yet soft as a fawn's in the gentleness of their expression--but terrible as the eagle's when roused."

"Were his locks golden?"

"The plumage of the raven not more black and glossy!"

"Was he tall of stature and strongly-framed?"

"Scarce even as tall as thyself now; his frame was light and elegant, but manly: to sum him up in all," she said, carried away by the prideful recollections awakened by these allusions to him, "he was a statesman; a patron of letters and the arts; a gallant knight, a brave soldier, and an accomplished scholar: he was called the handsomest man of his time: above all, he was a Christian!"

"_Am I like him?_" asked Lester, startling her with the depth of his voice, and at once showing her the drift of his seemingly aimless questions. "Is my stature slight? are these locks raven? are these eyes black? is the hue of the Spaniard on my cheek?"

The lady shrunk from his words, covered her face with her hands, and despairingly shook her head.

"Say," he added, with increasing energy, "is there the faintest lineament in my face--a scarce perceptible cast of the eye--a bend of the brow--a movement of the lip--a motion of arm or finger--aught in my carriage, walk, or voice, that reminds thee of thy n.o.ble husband?"

"No, no, no! Stop, stop, you will kill me!"

"One word more! Answer me truly, Lady Lester, as you stand before Heaven, have I not the same fair skin--the same light flowing hair--the same blue eyes--the stature, the very voice--ay, the very selfsame frown of Hurtel of the Red-Hand?"