For Mrs Catanach herself, she
never alluded to the subject, and indeed when it was mentioned in
her hearing pretended to avoid it; but at the same time she took good
care that her silence should be not only eloquent, but discreetly
so, that is, implying neither more nor less than she wished to be
believed.
The whisper, in its first germinal sprout, was merely that Malcolm
was not a MacPhail; and even in its second stage it only amounted
to this, that neither was he the grandson of old Duncan.
In the third stage of its development, it became the assertion that
Malcolm was the son of somebody of consequence; and in the fourth,
that a certain person, not yet named, lay under shrewd suspicion.
The fifth and final form it took was, that Malcolm was the son of
Mrs Stewart of Gersefell, who had been led to believe that he died
within a few days of his birth, whereas he had in fact been carried
off and committed to the care of Duncan MacPhail, who drew a secret
annual stipend of no small amount in consequence--whence indeed
his well known riches!
Concerning this final form of the whisper, a few of the women of
the burgh believed or thought or fancied they remembered both the
birth and reported death of the child in question--also certain
rumours afloat at the time, which cast an air of probability over
the new reading of his fate. In circles more remote from authentic
sources, the general reports met with remarkable embellishments,
but the framework of the rumour--what I may call the bones of it
--remained undisputed.
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