“The daughter, ye would say, of your father?” continued Elspeth. “No--be it a torment or be it a comfort to you--ken the truth, she was nae mair a daughter of your father’s house than I am.” “Woman, deceive me not!--make me not curse the memory of the parent I have so lately laid in the grave, for sharing in a plot the most cruel, the most infernal”-- “Bethink ye, my Lord Geraldin, ere ye curse the memory of a parent that’s gane, is there none of the blood of Glenallan living, whose faults have led to this dreadfu’ catastrophe?” “Mean you my brother?--he, too, is gone,” said the Earl. “No,” replied the sibyl, “I mean yoursell, Lord Geraldin. Had you not transgressed the obedience of a son by wedding Eveline Neville in secret while a guest at Knockwinnock, our plot might have separated you for a time, but would have left at least your sorrows without remorse to canker them. But your ain conduct had put poison in the weapon that we threw, and it pierced you with the mair force because ye cam rushing to meet it. Had your marriage been a proclaimed and acknowledged action, our stratagem to throw an obstacle into your way that couldna be got ower, neither wad nor could hae been practised against ye.” “Great Heaven!” said the unfortunate nobleman--“it is as if a film fell from my obscured eyes! Yes, I now well understand the doubtful hints of consolation thrown out by my wretched mother, tending indirectly to impeach the evidence of the horrors of which her arts had led me to believe myself guilty.” “She could not speak mair plainly,” answered Elspeth, “without confessing her ain fraud,--and she would have submitted to be torn by wild horses, rather than unfold what she had done; and if she had still lived, so would I for her sake. They were stout hearts the race of Glenallan, male and female, and sae were a’ that in auld times cried their gathering-word of Clochnaben--they stood shouther to shouther--nae man parted frae his chief for love of gold or of gain, or of right or of wrang. The times are changed, I hear, now.” The unfortunate nobleman was too much wrapped up in his own confused and distracted reflections, to notice the rude expressions of savage fidelity, in which, even in the latest ebb of life, the unhappy author of his misfortunes seemed to find a stern and stubborn source of consolation. “Great Heaven!” he exclaimed, “I am then free from a guilt the most horrible with which man can be stained, and the sense of which, however involuntary, has wrecked my peace, destroyed my health, and bowed me down to an untimely grave. Accept,” he fervently uttered, lifting his eyes upwards, “accept my humble thanks! If I live miserable, at least I shall not die stained with that unnatural guilt!--And thou--proceed if thou hast more to tell--proceed, while thou hast voice to speak it, and I have powers to listen.”