“Hester,” Roger said, and his voice was full of anguish, “why must you tell all this. It surely has nothing to do with the matter under consideration, and I would rather be spared, if possible, or at least hear it alone.” “I must tell it,” Hester rejoined, “to show you why I hid the will, and why he made it, and how big a lie _that woman_ told him.” There was the most intense scorn in her voice every time she said “that woman,” and Mrs. Walter Scott winced under it, but had no redress then; her time for that would be by and by, she reflected, and assuming a haughty indifference she was far from feeling she kept still while Hester went on: “The night she went away she undressed her baby herself; she wouldn’t let me touch him, and all the time she did it she was whispering, and cooing, and crying-like over him, and she kissed his face and arms, and even his little feet, and said once aloud so I in the next room heard her, ‘My poor darling, my pet, my precious one, will you ever hate your mother?’” “Hester, I cannot hear another word of that. Don’t you see you are killing me?” Roger said, and this time the tears streamed in torrents down his face, and his voice was choked with sobs. Hester heeded him now, and there were tears on her wrinkled face as she laid her hand pityingly on his golden brown hair and said, “Poor boy, I won’t harrer you any more. I’ll stick to the pint, which is that your mother, after you was asleep, and just afore I left her for the night, came up to me in her pretty coaxin’ way, and told me what a comfort I was to her, and said if anything ever was to happen that Roger should have no mother, she would trust me to care for him before all the world, and she made me promise that if anything should happen, I would never desert Roger, but love him as if he was my own, and consider his interest before that of any one else. I want you to mind them words, ‘consider his interest before any one else’ for that’s the upshot of the whole thing. I promised to do it. I _swore_ I would do it, and I’ve kep’ my word. Next morning she was gone, and in a week or so was drownded dead off Cape Hattrass, where I hope I’ll never go, for there’s allus a hurricane there when there ain’t a breath no wheres else. I sot them words down. I’ve read ’em every Sunday since as regular as my Bible, and that fetches me to the mornin’ the Squire was found dead.