The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals Part 50

"Oh, my poor, poor child! How will you bear this?" cried Lord Hope.

"Trust me, dear, dear papa--for I will call you so. Nothing can break my heart, if you and mamma Rachael will love me yet; for the rest, I am glad, so glad, that I am no longer a lady, and am left without a guinea.

This is to be really free!"

"Ah, poor child, how can we ever part with you?"

"Your own daughter will not begrudge me a little love; and, after all, I do belong to mamma Rachael more than she ever can. That is something.

Besides, it is from me that you must take your daughter, for I brought her here. Ask her if I did not."

The young girl was smiling, but tears stood in her eyes, and her lips quivered as she spoke.

"Come with me, father, and I will give you to her. It is hard, but I will."

She led Lord Hope across the room, drew back the curtain, and let in the soft gray light of that early dawn upon the trembling young creature who stood there.

Lord Hope shook in all his limbs when he saw that face. The eyes full of tears seemed to reproach him as _hers_ had on that fatal night.

He reached out his arms, with a convulsive heaving of the chest, and faltered out:

"Forgive me! forgive me! for I have bitterly repented."

He did not kiss her--he dared not even touch her forehead in that solemn presence; but he laid one hand on her head, rested his own upon it, asking that forgiveness of G.o.d which her heart gave, but could only express by pathetic silence.

Then the old woman came up to the window, and stood there, waiting.

When Lord Hope fell back against the window-frame, strengthless from excess of feeling, she laid a hand upon the girl's shoulder, and, turning her face gently to the light, gazed upon it with tender scrutiny. Then she said, talking to herself:

"It is her face! It is her face!"

"And you are Daniel Yates' mother. How I shall love you! Oh, how I loved him!"

Then the old woman's face began to quiver, and her large gray eyes filled with the slow tears old age gives out with such pain.

"Yes, child, you must love me a little for your mother's sake."

"And for the sake of that good man, your son, who was a father to me.

How often he has told me that, if there was anything grand or good in him, it came from the best mother that ever lived! 'Some day,' he once said, 'G.o.d may be merciful and let you know her. Then remember that she has nothing left but you.' I do remember it, and no child ever loved a grandmother better than I will love you."

The old woman lifted up her head from the gentle embrace thus offered her, and turned to her dead mistress.

A smile, soft as that hovering about that cold mouth, came to her lips and eyes.

"G.o.d is very good to me. Are the angels telling you of it, my old mistress, that you smile so?"

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

THE NEMESIS.

The last tender words were still lingering on the lips of Mrs. Yates, when the door opened and Lady Hope stood upon the threshold.

She had become restless beyond self-control in her own room, and came back to the death-chamber, wondering what detained her husband there so long. She had thrown the lace shawl from her head entirely; but it fell around her shoulders, shading her bare white arms and beautiful neck, which the amber-hued dress would otherwise have left uncovered. Framed in the doorway she made an imperial picture.

"My lord," she said, advancing to her husband, "what detains you here so long?"

Old Mrs. Yates stepped forward with a scared, wild look; a gleam of anger or fear, bright as fire, and fierce as a martyr's faith, shot into her eyes and broadened there. She came close to Lady Hope, facing her, and laid one hand heavily on her arm.

The haughty woman drew back, and would have shaken the hand from her arm, but it clung there with a grip of steel.

"Lord Hope, is this woman your wife?"

"His wife! Yes, old woman, I am his wife," cried Rachael, pale with indignation; "but who authorized you to ask?"

The old woman did not heed her scornfulness, but turned her eyes upon Lord Hope, whose face was already white with vague terror.

"Is she your wife--the woman who was called Rachael Closs?"

"It is Lady Hope, my wife. Why do you ask?"

"_Because it was this woman who murdered your first wife, Lady Ca.r.s.et's daughter!_"

More than the stillness of death settled upon that room. The two girls hushed their sobs, and clung closer together in awful silence. The man and the woman, on whom these words had fallen like a rock hurled from some great high stood living and human, but struck into marble by a single blow. The man could not move; the woman did not seem to breathe.

Hannah Yates went on, her voice low, but ringing out clear and distinctly like a funeral knell:

"On the twenty-first of June, now more than fifteen years ago, I saw you, Lord Hope, come out of a house in Forty-third Street, in New York.

"You know the house, and can never forget who lived in it. That day I had carried your child to see its mother, and left word at home for my son, Daniel Yates, to go after her; for I had business with a woman at one of the theatres, and was not sure of coming back in time. The woman I expected to see was not there; but it took me a long time to walk back, and it was about ten o'clock when I reached the house in Forty-third Street. Thinking it possible that Daniel might not have come home from his work till late, I was crossing the street to go in and inquire about the child, when the front door opened, and you came down the steps, with a fierce, angry air, such as I had seen many a time on this side the water. I knew that your presence in that house could have no peaceful meaning, and went over. I had a latch-key, and did not need to ring.

"The hall was dark--everything was still below; but a sound of weeping and moans of distress came from my lady's chamber. I went up and found her in the dark, lying across her bed, trembling dreadfully. She shrieked when I bent over her, and it was not till I got a light that she would be satisfied that it was only me. Then she sat up, and, in a rapid way, told me that you had been there after the child, and would have it but that the little creature had crept away and could not be found anywhere in the house. She must have got into the street, and you would find her, or she might be lost. She begged me to go at once and look for the child, and wanted to go with me; but I would not let her do that. I took her arms from my neck--for, in her joy at seeing the old woman, she had flung them there--made her lie down on the bed, and went away, promising to come back if I did not find the child; but, if I did, it was to be carried to my own house, as she was afraid to trust it near her. With this understanding I left her to search for the little girl.

"She may have crept down to the bas.e.m.e.nt door and be hiding under the steps, I thought. Of course, the little thing would be afraid to go out into the streets. So the first thing I did was to run down into the area. In my haste I had left the door ajar, and bethought myself to go back and shut it, but while I was searching the area a woman ran up the steps and, pushing the door open, went into the house.

"At first I thought it was one of the servants, for they all appeared to be out, but she had on a striped India shawl, such as ladies wore in travelling, and a straw bonnet, from which the veil had blown back.

These were not things worn by servants; besides, her air and walk convinced me that this woman was of another cla.s.s. As she entered the door I saw her face for a single moment, but long enough to show me that I had never seen it before.

"The child was not in the area. I rang the bas.e.m.e.nt bell, meaning to question the servants, but no one answered it. Then I hesitated where to go next, and as I stood in the shadow of the steps thinking the matter over, this same woman came through the door, shut it without noise, and ran down to the pavement. I saw her face clearly then, for the street lamp was bright. It was that of the woman by your side, Lord Hope."

Rachael Closs turned a pallid face upon her husband.

"Will you permit this woman to go on? Is this hideous lie a thing for my husband to encourage by his silence? Who is this audacious woman?"

Lord Hope attempted to speak, but his white lips seemed frozen together.

"I am Hannah Yates, the nurse of that murdered lady; the woman who has given fourteen years of her life, rather than have scandal fall on the husband her foster-child loved, or the awful truth reach her dear old mistress, who died, thank G.o.d, without knowing it."

"And you listen, my lord, to this woman, a confessed murderer, and, no doubt, an escaped convict?"