“That dark spirit of vengeance,” replied the stranger, “is turning your brain, I think, or you would not say so.  Whatever Sir Thomas Gourlay may be, he is not the man to act as the puppet of any person.”

“So you think; but I tell you he’s acting as mine, for all that.”

“Well, well, Corbet, that is your own affair.  Have you anything of importance to communicate to me, before I see Lady Gourlay?  I ask you for the last time.”

“I have.  The black villain and she have spoken at last.  He yielded to his daughter so far as to call upon her, and asked her to be present at the weddin’.”

“The wedding!” exclaimed the stranger, looking aghast.  “God of heaven, old man, do you mean to say that they are about to be married so soon?—­about to be married at all?  But I will leave you,” he added; “there is no possibility of wringing anything out of you.”

“Wait a little,” continued Corbet.  “What I’m goin’ to tell you won’t do you any harm, at any rate.”

“Be quick, then.  Gracious heaven!—­married!—­Curses seize you, old man, be quick.”

“On the mornin’ afther to-morrow the marriage is to take place in Sir Thomas’s own house.  Lord Dunroe’s sisther is to be bridesmaid, and a young fellow named Roberts—­”

“I know—­I have met him.”

“Well, and did you ever see any one that he resembled, or that resembled him?  I hope in the Almighty,” he added, uttering the ejaculation evidently in connection with some private thought or purpose of his own, “I hope in the Almighty that this sickness will keep off o’ me for a couple o’ days at any rate.  Did you ever see any one that resembled him?”

“Yes,” replied the stranger, starting, for the thought had flashed upon him; “he is the living image of Miss Gourlay!  Why do you ask?”

“Bekaise, merely for a raison I have; but if you have patience, you’ll find that the longer you live, the more you’ll know; only at this time you’ll know no more from me, barrin’ that this same young officer is to be his lordship’s groom’s-man.  Dr. Sombre, the clergyman of the parish, is to marry them in the baronet’s house.  A Mrs. Mainwaring, too, is to be there; Miss Gourlay begged that she would be allowed to come, and he says she may.  You see now how well I know everything that happens there, don’t you?” he asked, with a grin of triumph.  “But I tell you there will be more at the same weddin’ than he thinks.  So now—­ah, this pain!—­there’s another string of it—­I feel it go through me like an arrow—­so now you may go and see Lady Gourlay, and break the glad tidin’s to her.”

With feelings akin to awe and of repugnance, but not at all of contempt—­for old Corbet was a man whom no one could despise—­the stranger took his departure, and proceeded to Lady Gourlay’s, with a vague impression that the remarkable likeness between Lucy and young Roberts was not merely accidental.

He found her at home, placid as usual, but with evidences of a resignation that was at once melancholy and distressing to witness.  The struggle of this admirable woman’s heart, though sustained by high Christian feeling, was, nevertheless, wearing her away by slow and painful degrees.  The stranger saw this, and scarcely knew in what terms to shape the communication he had to make, full as it was of ecstasy to the mother’s loving spirit, yet dashed with such doubt and sorrow.