“Oh, mem,” said Gilchrist, “there’s a’ the evidence, first his ain story, and then the leddy’s that convinced ye for a moment; and then, what is most o’ a, the old gentleman, the writer, one of them that kens everything: of the father that died so many long years ago, and the baby before him.”
Miss Bethune put up her hands to her ears, she stamped her foot upon the ground. “How dare ye--how dare ye?” she cried. “Either man or woman that repeats that fool story to me is no friend of mine. My child, that I’ve felt in my heart growing up, and seen him boy and man! What’s that old man’s word--a stranger that knows nothing, that had even forgotten what he was put up to say--in comparison with what is in my heart? Is there such a thing as nature, or no? Is a mother just like any other person, no better, rather worse? Oh, woman!--you that are a woman! with no call to be rigid about your evidence like a man--what’s your evidence to me? I will just tell him when he comes back. ‘My bonnie man,’ I will say, ‘you have been driven here and there in this world, and them that liked you best have failed you; but here is the place where you belong, and here is a love that will never fail!’”
“Oh, my dear leddy, my own mistress,” cried Gilchrist, “think--think before you do that! He will ask ye for the evidence, if I am not to ask for it. He’s a fine, independent-spirited young gentleman, and he will just shake his head, and say he’ll lippen to nobody again. Oh, dinna deceive the young man! Ye might find out after----”
“What, Gilchrist? Do you think I would change my mind about my own son, and abandon him, like this woman, at the last?”
“I never knew you forsake one that trusted in ye, I’m not saying that; but there might come one after all that had a better claim. There might appear one that even the like of me would believe in--that would have real evidence in his favour, that was no more to be doubted than if he had never been taken away out of your arms.”
Miss Bethune turned round quick as lightning upon her maid, her eyes shining, her face full of sudden colour and light. “God bless you, Gilchrist!” she cried, seizing the maid by her shoulders with a half embrace; “I see now you have never believed in that story--no more than me.”