Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/166

156 Lady Osborne rose from her seat, and motioned the woman out of the room.

"Begone!" she said; "I have done with you. What you did you were well paid for. I will not have you come about here again. I shall give orders that you are not to be allowed inside the park gates."

The woman's face grew white with a great rage. She was silent for a moment; then her expression changed.

"You will not let me in to see my own child?"

"Your own child? What do you mean, woman? What do you mean?" Lady Osborne seized her arm with a hard grip.

"Yes, my child," the woman said deliberately. "One of the two children who lay upon my breast died, but it was not mine. It was not he that I put away from his home upon my heart that went, but yours."

"And that child out there"—Lady Osborne dragged the woman to the window—"whose child is that? Answer me: whose child is that?"

The woman looked out. Chasing the butterflies from rose to rose in the garden went a