“We had that changed, the numbers and the names. Louisa _would_ die, Catharine _would_ live. We couldn’t help it.” “But where is Catharine?” A look of sharp cunning came into those sunken features. “I won’t tell. The time isn’t up. He isn’t crazy yet. I won’t help him to bring sons to eat up one half of your inheritance.” “Mother, remember that you are dying.” “Not yet, not for years. I’m getting stronger every minute. Don’t you see how I can talk now. When you came, there wasn’t a word in my voice. I shall live to see you and Oakley’s widow rolling in gold. She’s rich.” “Oakley’s widow—what do you know of her?” “What do I know? Hadn’t I eyes? Didn’t I watch you when she was married, watch and listen and pick up things? Didn’t I know what was going on in the mind of my own son?” “O mother, how much misery you might have saved me!” cried the young man in a passion of grief. “Haven’t I just told you she was dead, your young wife? Didn’t I go down to that cottage, on the Island, to see this widow and learn all about her? Isn’t this kind, when you have been pining and pining about her? I didn’t want to explain that she was dead, and Catharine Lacy alive—it may do mischief yet. It may bring them together, and despoil you of one half the property. He won’t go crazy. When he thought the girl dead, it only made him melancholy; he would not go mad. Let him find her, and all that I have done will go for nothing.” “Mother, you should be more just to George. He is your husband’s oldest son.” “He is her son, and I hate them both.” “But his mother is dead, years ago.” Again that cunning gleam broke into her eyes; but the woman did not speak. “Have you no kind remembrance for my brother?” said the young man, on whom that gleam of the eye made no impression, “he has never wronged you.” “Oh! yes, take that,” she said, pointing to a picture that stood near the door, with its face to the wall. “It has been his friend from first to last—tell him it nearly cost me my life. The crazy wretch worshipped the picture,—I knew that, and would have it. She came at me like a panther; we were on the shore; I ran for the boat and she after me into the water, knee-deep. The man pulled with all his might; but she held me by the throat, tore at me like a wolf. My foot got fast in the cross-beam of the boat, or she would have drowned me before their faces. The boatmen had to beat her off with their oars, and she let go; but left my ankle and foot wrenched and bruised till I have never had a minute’s rest till now—not a minute. Give him the picture, with my love. It’s cost me dear; but she hasn’t got it to pine and pray over. Give him the picture, I say; it’s all he will ever get from me.” Louis De Marke listened to this wild speech, shocked and bewildered. To him it had no meaning, but it grieved him to find so much of bitterness and malice in what he thought to be the last ravings of an unrepentant soul, and that soul the one from which his own drew life.