Lovely still peered the dim face of his girl wife upon him, through
the dusty lattice of his memory; and a mighty corroboration of
Malcolm's asserted birth lay in the look upon his face as he hurried
aghast from the hermit's cell; for not on his first had the marquis
seen that look and in those very circumstances! And the youth was
one to be proud of--one among a million! But there were other
and terrible considerations.
Incapable as he naturally was of doing justice to a woman of Miss
Horn's inflexibility in right, he could yet more than surmise the
absoluteness of that inflexibility--partly because it was hostile
to himself, and he was in the mood to believe in opposition and
harshness, and deny--not providence, but goodness. Convenient half
measures would, he more than feared, find no favour with her. But
she had declared her inability to prove Malcolm his son without the
testimony of Mrs Catanach, and the latter was even now representing
him as the son of Mrs Stewart! That Mrs Catanach at the same time
could not be ignorant of what had become of the child born to him,
he was all but certain; for, on that night when Malcolm and he
found her in the wizard's chamber, had she not proved her strange
story--of having been carried to that very room blindfolded,
and, after sole attendance on the birth of a child, whose mother's
features, even in her worst pains, she had not once seen, in like
manner carried away again,--had she not proved the story true
by handing him the ring she had drawn from the lady's finger, and
sewn, for the sake of future identification, into the lower edge of
one of the bed curtains--which ring was a diamond he had given
his wife from his own finger when they parted? She probably believed
the lady to have been Mrs Stewart, and the late marquis the father
of the child.
Pages:
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619