The bars of the fender were blurred. The brass kettle, instead of staring him in the face, melted quite away. Mitty stroked his head and face. "Cryin'!" she said--"my lamby cryin'!" "Not for myself, Mitty." "Who for, then? For that Miss Dinah?" "No, Mitty, for you. This is no home for you and me." He took her hard hand and rubbed his cheek against it. "It belongs to Colonel Tempest. I am not my father's son, Mitty." "Well, my precious," said Mitty, soothingly, in no wise discomposed by what John feared would have quite overwhelmed her, "and if your poor mammy did say as much to me when she was light-headed, when her pains was on her, there's no call to fret about that, seeing it's a long time ago, and her dead and all. Poor thing! I can see her now, with her pretty eyes and her little hands, and she'd put her head against me and say, 'Nursey' (Nursey I was to her), 'I'm not fit neither to live nor to die.' Many and many's the night I've roared to think of her after she was gone, when you was asleep in your crib. But there's no need for you to fret, my deary." John's heart contracted. Mitty knew also. Oh, if he might but have started life knowing what even Mitty knew! "They'd no business to marry her to Mr. Tempest," continued Mitty, shaking her head, "and she, poor thing, idolizing that black Lord Fane, as was her first cousin. It wasn't likely, after that, she'd settle to Mr. Tempest, who was as light as tow. It was against nature. She never took a bit of interest in him, nor him in her neither, that I could see. A hard man he was, too--a hard man. She sent for him when she was dying. She would not see him while there was any chance. 'Forgive me,' she says; she says it over and over, me holding her up. 'I wouldn't ask it if I was staying, but I'm doing the best I can by dying. It's not much to make up, but it's the best I can. And,' she says, 'don't think, Jack, as all women are bad like me. There's a many good ones as 'ull make you happy yet when I'm gone.' I can see him now, standing by her, looking past her out of the window with his face like a flint. 'I've known two false ones,' he says; and he went away without another word. And she says after a bit to me, 'I've always been frightened at the very thought of dying, but it's living I'm frightened of now.' Eh! Master John, your poor mammy! She did repent. And Mr. Tempest sent for me to the library after the funeral, and he says, 'Promise me, nurse, that you'll never repeat what your mistress said to me when she was not herself.' And he looked hard at me, and I promised. And I've never breathed it to any living soul, not to one I haven't, from that day to this." "I found it out three weeks ago," said John. "And as I am not Mr. Tempest's son, everything I have belongs by right to Colonel Tempest, the next heir, not to me. Overleigh is not mine. It never was mine."