the old
and impotent may spurn thee!"

"Hag!" cried Montreal, in the reaction of sudden fury and maddened
pride, springing up to the full height of his stature. "Hag! thou hast
passed the limits to which, remembering who thou art, my forbearance
gave thee licence. I had well-nigh forgot that thou hadst assumed my
part--I am the Accuser! Woman!--the boy!--shrink not! equivocate not!
lie not!--thou wert the thief!"

"I was. Thou taughtest me the lesson how to steal a--"

"Render--restore him!" interrupted Montreal, stamping on the ground with
such force that the splinters of the marble fragments on which he stood
shivered under his armed heel.

The woman little heeded a violence at which the fiercest warrior of
Italy might have trembled; but she did not make an immediate answer. The
character of her countenance altered from passion into an expression
of grave, intent, and melancholy thought. At length she replied to
Montreal; whose hand had wandered to his dagger-hilt, with the instinct
of long habit, whenever enraged or thwarted, rather than from any design
of blood; which, stern and vindictive as he was, he would have been
incapable of forming against any woman,--much less against the one then
before him.

"Walter de Montreal," said she, in a voice so calm that it almost
sounded like that of compassion, "the boy, I think, has never known
brother or sister: the only child of a once haughty and lordly race, on
both sides, though now on both dishonoured--nay, why so impatient? thou
wilt soon learn the worst--the boy is dead!"

"Dead!" repeated Montreal, recoiling and growing pale; "dead!--no,
no--say not that! He has a mother,--you know he has!--a fond,
meekhearted, anxious, hoping mother!--no!--no, he is not dead!"

"Thou canst feel, then, for a mother?" said the old woman, seemingly
touched by the tone of the Provencal. "Yet, bethink thee; is it not
better that the grave should save him from a life of riot, of bloodshed,
and of crime? Better to sleep with God than to wake with the fiends!"

"Dead!" echoed Montreal; "dead!--the pretty one!--so young!--those
eyes--the mother's eyes--closed so soon?"

"Hast thou aught else to say? Thy sight scares my very womanhood from my
soul!--let me be gone."

"Dead!--may I believe thee? or dost thou mock me? Thou hast uttered thy
curse, hearken to my warning:--If thou hast lied in this, thy last hour
shall dismay thee, and thy death-bed shall be the death-bed of despair!"