every day coulder at my heart.Interrupt me nae mair with exclamations and groans and accusations, but hear my tale to an end! And then--if ye be indeed sic a Lord of Glenallan as I hae heard of in _my_ day--make your merrymen gather the thorn, and the brier, and the green hollin, till they heap them as high as the house-riggin', and burn! burn! burn! the auld witch Elspeth, and a' that can put ye in mind that sic a creature ever crawled upon the land!''
``Go on,'' said the Earl, ``go on--I will not again interrupt you.''
He spoke in a half-suffocated yet determined voice, resolved that no irritability on his part should deprive him of this opportunity of acquiring proofs of the wonderful tale he then heard.But Elspeth had become exhausted by a continuous narration of such unusual length; the subsequent part of her story was more broken, and though still distinctly intelligible in most parts, had no longer the lucid conciseness which the first part of her narrative had displayed to such an astonishing degree.Lord Glenallan found it necessary, when she had made some attempts to continue her narrative without success, to prompt her memory by demanding--``What proofs she could propose to bring of the truth of a narrative so different from that which she had originally told?''
``The evidence,'' she replied, ``of Eveline Neville's real birth was in the Countess's possession, with reasons for its being for some time kept private;--they may yet be found, if she has not destroyed them, in the left hand drawer of the ebony cabinet that stood in the dressing-room.These she meant to suppress for the time, until you went abroad again, when she trusted, before your return, to send Miss Neville back to her ain country, or to get her settled in marriage.''
``But did you not show me letters of my father's, which seemed to me, unless my senses altogether failed me in that horrible moment, to avow his relationship to--to the unhappy''--``We did; and, with my testimony, how could you doubt the fact, or her either? But we suppressed the true explanation of these letters, and that was, that your father thought it right the young leddy should pass for his daughter for a while, on account o'some family reasons that were amang them.''
``But wherefore, when you learned our union, was this dreadful artifice persisted in?''
``It wasna,'' she replied, ``till Lady Glenallan had communicated this fause tale, that she suspected ye had actually made a marriage--nor even then did you avow it sae as to satisfy her whether the ceremony had in verity passed atween ye or no--But ye remember, O ye canna but remember weel, what passed in that awfu' meeting!''
``Woman! you swore upon the gospels to the fact which you now disavow.''
``I did,--and I wad hae taen a yet mair holy pledge on it, if there had been ane--I wad not hae spared the blood of my body, or the guilt of my soul, to serve the house of Glenallan.''
``Wretch! do you call that horrid perjury, attended with consequences yet more dreadful--do you esteem that a service to the house of your benefactors?''
``I served her, wha was then the head of Glenallan, as she required me to serve her.The cause was between God and her conscience--the manner between God and mine--She is gane to her account, and I maun follow.Have I taulds you a'?''
``No,'' answered Lord Glenallan--``you have yet more to tell--you have to tell me of the death of the angel whom your perjury drove to despair, stained, as she thought herself, with a crime so horrible.Speak truth--was that dreadful--was that horrible incident''--he could scarcely articulate the words--``was it as reported? or was it an act of yet further, though not more atrocious cruelty, inflicted by others?''
``I understand you,'' said Elspeth.``But report spoke truth;--our false witness was indeed the cause, but the deed was her ain distracted act.On that fearfu' disclosure, when ye rushed frae the Countess's presence and saddled your horse, and left the castle like a fire-flaught, the Countess hadna yet discovered your private marriage; she hadna fund out that the union, which she had framed this awfu' tale to prevent, had e'en taen place.Ye fled from the house as if the fire o' Heaven was about to fa' upon it, and Miss Neville, atween reason and the want o't, was put under sure ward.But the ward sleep't, and the prisoner waked--the window was open--the way was before her--there was the cliff, and there was the sea!--O, when will I forget that!''
``And thus died,'' said the Earl, ``even so as was reported?''
``No, my lord.I had gane out to the cove--the tide was in, and it flowed, as ye'll remember, to the foot o' that cliff--it was a great convenience that for my husband's trade--Where am I wandering?--I saw a white object dart frae the tap o'