I instinctively felt that he would
have destroyed it."
"The mother's instinct is like inspiration," said Traverse.
"It may be so. Well, the old woman pitied me and did as I desired.
She took the dead child to Colonel Le Noir, who carried it off, and
afterward buried it as the sole heir of his elder brother. The old
woman carried off my living child and my wedding ring, concealed
under her ample shawl. Anxiety for the 'fate of my child caused me
to do what nothing else on earth would have tempted me to do--to
creep about the halls and passages on tiptoe and under cover of the
night and listen at keyholes," said the lady, blushing deeply at the
recollection.
"You--you were perfectly right, Mrs. Le Noir! In a den of robbers,
where your life and honor were always at stake, you could have done
no otherwise!" exclaimed Traverse, warmly.
"I learned by this means that my poor old nurse had paid with her
liberty for her kindness to me. She had been, abducted and forced
from her native country together with a child found in her
possession, which they evidently suspected, and I knew, to be mine.
Oh, heaven! the agony then of thinking of what might be her unknown
fate, worse than death, perhaps! I felt that I had only succeeded in
saving her life-doubtful good!"
Here Mrs. Le Noir paused in thought for a few moments and then
resumed.
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