She listened impassively, standing before him in the black robes
and conventual coif which his tyranny had imposed upon her. When
he had done, a faint smile swept over the face that had grown so
hard in these last twelve years since that day when her boy had
been slain almost under her very eyes.
"It is a circumstantial tale," she said. "It is perhaps true. It
is probably true."
"True!" He bounded from his seat. "True? What are you saying,
woman? Yourself you saw the boy dead."
"I did, and I know who killed him."
"But you saw him. You recognized him for your own, since you set
the people on to kill those whom you believed had slain him."
"Yes," she answered. And added the question: "What do you want of
me now?"
"What do I want?" He was amazed that she should ask, exasperated.
Had the conventual confinement turned her head? "I want your
testimony. I want you to denounce this fellow for the impostor
that he is. The people will believe you."
"You think they will?" Interest had kindled in her glance.
"What else? Are you not the mother of Demetrius, and shall not a
mother know her own son?"
"You forget. He was ten years of age then--a child. Now he is a
grown man of three-and-twenty.
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