“’Tis well done, lad ... ’tis well done,” she rejoined when Richard had ceased speaking, and silence had fallen for awhile on that tiny cottage parlor, “’tis well done,” she reiterated.  “The secret hath weighed heavily upon my old shoulders these past few years, since thou and Adam were no longer children....  But I swore to thy grandmother who died in the Lord, that thou and Adam should never hear of thy mother’s wantonness and shame....  I swore it on her death-bed and I have kept my oath ... but I am old now....  After this trouble, mine hour will surely come....  I am prepared but I will not take thy secret, lad, with me into my grave.”

She shuffled across to the old oak dresser which occupied one wall of the little room.  Two pairs of glowing eyes followed her every movement; those of Richard Lambert, who seemed to see a vision of his destiny faintly outlined—­still blurred—­but slowly unfolding itself in the tangled web of fate; and then those of Editha, who even as the old woman spoke had felt a tidal wave of long-forgotten memories sweeping right over her senses.  The look in the Quakeress’s eyes, the words she uttered—­though still obscure and enigmatical—­had already told her the whole truth.  As in a flash she saw before her, her youth and all its follies, the gay life of thoughtlessness and pleasures, the cradles of her children, the tiny boys who to the woman of fashion were but a hindrance and a burden.

She saw her own mother, rigid and dour, the counterpart of this same old Puritan who had not hesitated to part two children from their mother for over a score of years, any more than she hesitated now to fling insult upon insult on the wretched woman who had more than paid her debt to her own careless frivolity of long ago.

“Thy brother’s name was Henry Adam de Chavasse, and thine Michael Richard de Chavasse, sons of Rowland de Chavasse, and of the wanton who was his wife.”

The old woman had taken a packet of papers, yellow with age and stained with many tears, from out a secret drawer of the old oak dresser.

Her voice was no longer tremulous as it was wont to be, but firm and dull, monotonous in tone like that of one who speaks whilst in a trance.  Squire Boatfield had uttered an exclamation of boundless astonishment.  Mechanically he took the packet of papers from the Quakeress’s hand and after an instant’s hesitation, and in response to an appealing look from Richard, he broke the string which held the documents together and perused them one by one.

But Editha, even as the last of the old woman’s words ceased to echo in the narrow room, had risen to her feet.  Her heavy cloak glided off her shoulders down upon the ground; her eyes, preternaturally large, glowing and full of awe, were now fixed upon the young man—­her son.

“De Chavasse,” she murmured, her brain whirling, her heart filled not only with an awful terror, but also with a great and overwhelming joy.  “My sons ... then I am ...”