“The voice which said these words was very steady and low, but Haverleigh heard it distinctly, and grasping the back of the chair near which he was standing, repeated: ‘My mother; you, who were only my nurse. You call yourself my mother!’ “‘Yes, and before Heaven I am your mother; listen while I tell you what you should have known before, but for a promise to the dead.’ “He was still staring at her, with that same corpse-like pallor on his face, and the look of a wild beast in his eyes, but he did not speak, for some thing in the woman before him kept him silent while she went on: “‘I am your mother, and I thought I was your father’s wife, until after you were born, when there came a day of horrid awakening, and I found I was betrayed by the man I loved, and for whom I had left my home, for I was young and innocent once, and pretty, too, they said; but I was poor and hated poverty, and when this rich man came with honeyed words and fair promises, I believed and trusted him to my ruin, and went with him over the sea—for I am American born, and not English, as you suppose. We staid in lodgings in London till you were born, and by that time a face fairer than mine had come between me and your father, a woman he meant to marry, and so he told me the truth of his villainy, and when I found I was not a wife, I think I went mad for a time, and when I came to myself I was in poorer lodgings in an obscure part of London, where I passed for Mr. Haverleigh’s housekeeper, who had served him so faithfully that he would not cast me off in my trouble. That was the lie he told, and they believed him and were kind to me for the sake of the money he paid them, You were at Grasmere then with your father, whom in spite of everything I loved, and to whom I went, begging him to let me have the care of my child if nothing more. To this he consented, the more readily because he was about to marry my rival, and you might be in the way. He loved you, I do believe, and he trusted me, but made me swear not to divulge my real relation to you. I was your nurse, your foster-mother, nothing more. There might be no children of the marriage, he said, and if so, he should make you his heir, and did not wish you to know the stain upon your birth. There _were_ no children, and as if to punish him for his sin to me, his wife died within the year, and he was left alone and made you his heir, so that when he died all he had was left to you, except a thousand pounds given to me, whom he designated as the foster-mother of his child.