“Yes, yes,” mused Mrs. Yorke, in tender tones, and passing her fingers over the other’s silvering hair and haggard face; “I do—­I must believe it.  I should not have known you to-day had you not called me by my name.  You must have mourned for him indeed.  Is this the cheek he loved to kiss?  Is this the hair a lock of which I took to comfort him in prison?  Poor soul—­poor soul!”

“How is he, madam?” whispered Harry, hoarsely.  “Is he well?  Is he free?”

“Not yet, Harry.  In a year hence he will be.  I had a letter only yesterday.  But you must never see him; and if you really love him—­I speak it for his sake, not theirs—­you must never let him set eyes on your husband or your boy.”

“I do not wish to see him; it would be too terrible to bear,” groaned Harry.

“But he must not see them,” insisted the other, gravely.  “You must put the sea between yourselves and him, or there will be murder done.  His wrath is terrible, and will be the destruction of both them and him.  The hope of vengeance is the food he lives upon, and without which he would have perished years ago.  Even if you persuaded him, as you have convinced me, that you yourself are innocent of his ruin, that would only make him firmer in his purpose against your husband.  He will have his life-blood, and then his own will pay for it.  If I had not seen you, I meant to see this man, and give him warning six months before Richard left the prison.”

“Solomon would never heed it,” exclaimed Harry, “nor even believe it if I told him.”

“He will believe me,” said the other, composedly.  “You must bring him here that I may tell him.  Your Solomon must be a fool indeed not to hearken when a mother warns him against her own son.  Mind, I do not blame my Richard, woman!” continued Mrs. Yorke, with sudden passion; “he has had provocation enough; it is but right to kill such vermin, and I could stand by and smile to see him do it.  But they must be kept apart, I say—­this man and Richard—­lest a worse thing befall him than has happened already.”

“Never to see him more!” moaned Harry, covering her face with her hands; “never to tell him I was not the wretch I seemed! only to fear him as an enemy to me and mine—­”

“Ay, and to himself,” interrupted the other, gravely.  “If you would not inflict far more on him than you have done already; if you would not—­as you will, if you neglect my warning—­designedly bring him to a shameful death, as you have involuntarily doomed him to a shameful life, keep these two men apart.  If you love this son of yours, remove him from the reach of mine.”

“Great Heaven!” cried Harry, shuddering, “would he harm my boy—­my innocent boy?”