“I remember the scene,” he said, with a smile. “It was perhaps a little of what you young folk call melodramatic: but Harry Bertram’s imagination gets a kind of shock, and he remembers. And so you are a reader of Sir Walter, and mind that scene?” “I remember it very well,” said the young man, bewildered. “But about the maid? You said----” “Oh, nothing about the maid; she’s my faithful maid, but a stupid woman as ever existed. Never you mind what I said. I say things that are very silly from time to time. But I would like to know how you ever heard your mother was living, when you have never seen her, nor know anything about her? I suppose not even her name?” “My father told me so when he was dying: he told Mr. Bristow so, but he gave us no further information. I gathered that my mother---- It is painful to betray such an impression.” She looked at him with a deep red rising over her cheeks, and a half-defiant look. “I am old enough to be your mother, you need not hesitate to speak before me,” she said. “It is not that; it is that I can’t associate that name with anything--anything--to be ashamed of.” “I would hope not, indeed!” she cried, standing up, towering over him as if she had added a foot to her height. She gave forth a long fiery breath, and then asked, “Did he dare to say that?” with a heaving breast. “He did not say it: but my guardian thought----” “Oh, your guardian thought! That was what your guardian would naturally think. A man--that is always of an evil mind where women are concerned! And what did she think?--her, his wife, the other guardian, the woman I have seen?” “She is not like any one else,” said young Gordon; “she will never believe in any harm. You have given me one scene, I will give you another. She said what Desdemona said, ‘I do not believe there was ever any such woman’.” “Bless her! But oh, there are--there are!” cried Miss Bethune, tears filling her eyes, “in life as well as in men’s ill imaginations. But not possible to her or to me!” CHAPTER XI.