Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/169

Rh hers, and the interloper that for seven years had taken his place in everything—even in his mother's heart—was the child of a nurse—a common peasant woman.

She got up from her chair, and went to the window, and again saw the boy running amongst the roses. She called him, and he came smiling into the room. Lady Osborne seated herself in a chair, and placed him before her. He raised his arms to put them around her neck, but she caught his hands and held him away from her. Her ghastly face was before him, hard and cold, and he shrank from a gaze he had never beheld before.

"That's it; shrink away from me. I have discovered you at last, interloper, thief!"

The boy grew white and afraid.

"I have discovered you, and I believe you know it," the woman said to the innocent child who stood silent before her. "Do you see these rooms," she continued, in a dull voice, "these beautiful rooms, full of valuable things?" She drew him to the window again. "Do you see those fields, stretching everywhere around the house? Whom do those belong to—whom do you imagine they belong to?"