my tale to an
end! And then - if ye be indeed sic a Lord of Glenallan as I hae heard of in my
day - make your merrymen gather the thorn, and the brier, and the green hollin,
till they heap them as high as the house-riggin', and burn! burn! burn! the auld
witch Elspeth, and a' that can put ye in mind that sic a creature ever crawled
upon the land!«
    »Go on,« said the Earl, »go on - I will not again interrupt you.«
    He spoke in a half-suffocated yet determined voice, resolved that no
irritability on his part should deprive him of this opportunity of acquiring
proofs of the wonderful tale he then heard. But Elspeth had become exhausted by
a continuous narration of such unusual length; the subsequent part of her story
was more broken, and though still distinctly intelligible in most parts, had no
longer the lucid conciseness which the first part of her narrative had displayed
to such an astonishing degree. Lord Glenallan found it necessary, when she had
made some attempts to continue her narrative without success, to prompt her
memory by demanding - »What proofs she could propose to bring of the truth of a
narrative so different from that which she had originally told?«
    »The evidence,« she replied, »of Eveline Neville's real birth was in the
Countess's possession, with reasons for its being for some time kept private; -
they may yet be found, if she has not destroyed them, in the left hand drawer of
the ebony cabinet that stood in the dressing-room. These she meant to suppress
for the time, until you went abroad again, when she trusted, before your return,
to send Miss Neville back to her ain country, or to get her settled in
marriage.«
    »But did you not show me letters of my father's, which seemed to me, unless
my senses altogether failed me in that horrible moment, to avow his relationship
to - to the unhappy« -
    »We did; and, with my testimony, how could you doubt the fact, or her
either? But we suppressed the true explanation of these letters, and that was,
that your father thought it right the young leddy should pass for his daughter
for a while, on account o' some family reasons that were amang them.«
    »But wherefore, when you learned our union, was this dreadful artifice
persisted in?«
    »It wasna,« she replied, »till Lady Glenallan had communicated this fause
tale,