"Suppose Margaret--no! it isn't likely she would know any thing about it. He wasn't the man to make confidants of women. She gave the message to the son, not knowing what it meant, probably. Why, he wouldn't have dared to tell her! And then inviting Cornelia--no, no! I've had some acquaintance with Margaret, and, with all her nonsense, I believe she's honest. Besides, what interest could she have to be otherwise? To be sure, she didn't give me the true reason for the _incognito_; but that's nothing; she's just the woman to tell a useless fib, and reserve the truth for important occasions only--or what she thinks such." The professor remained a while longer at the window, abstractedly staring at the drops which hastened after one another from the wet eaves. Suddenly he turned around, and walked up to the table, flapping his slipper-heels, and settling his spectacles, as he went. "Did any one ever speak to you of your mother, sir?" demanded he in the ear of the reading Bressant. "Confound the fellow!" passed at the same time through his mind; "does he think I'm a chair or a table?" "My mother?" repeated the young man, looking up, and appearing somewhat surprised at the idea of his ever having possessed the article. "Oh, yes! my father once told me she was dead. It was long ago. I'd almost forgotten it." "Told you she was dead, hey? Humph! just what I expected!" growled the old gentleman, who seemed, however, to become additionally wrathful at the intelligence. After a moment's scowl straight at his would-be pupil, he shuffled up to his chair, and sat solidly down in it. Bressant (to whom the professor had probably appeared to the full as peculiar as he to the professor), seeing signs of an approach to business in his action and attitude, tossed his book on the table, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and fixed his eyes directly upon the old gentleman's glasses.