“You do not realize the cruel disappointment it was to him to have his hopes thus ruined. If I had not been so blind and foolish in my love, _you_ would now be the heir of all his proud possessions. I have wronged you also, my noble boy,” she sighed, in bitter pain. “Do not think of it, dear mother. It was not your fault; you were cheated and ruined by a designing villain. Oh, that I may meet him some day!” he cried, all the blood of his noble ancestors running riot in his veins. He was very handsome, and his mother told him that he looked like his grandfather, the Marquis of Wycliffe, which to him, in his bitterness against his treatment of her, sounded like very tame praise. “Mother,” he burst out one day afterward, “have you one particle of affection remaining for—that man?” “No, my dear. That was crushed; all my wild love was burned to ashes that night when, in my misery, he turned from me, and I went out alone to battle with my shame.” “That is well. But, mother, please do not call it _shame_. _You_ were guiltless of any wrong. The _shame_, if there be any, is his,” he urged, with troubled brow. Marion sighed and let the matter drop. If the shame was not to be imputed to her, she had suffered as though it were. From that day her son was changed. A new dignity of purpose seemed to crown him. His boyishness dropped from him all at once, and he suddenly developed, mentally, into the full stature of a man. He became grave and thoughtful, but a new and deeper tenderness pervaded all his care of his mother thereafter, making him gentle as a woman in his sympathy and attention to her wants. She died blessing him, and telling him what a comfort he had been to her all his life, and bidding him not forget the lessons she had taught him of truth and right. With an almost breaking heart, he buried her under a noble, sweeping elm, in a quiet spot of the village cemetery, and felt as if he had not a friend upon the face of the earth. He sent a notice of her death to the Marquis of Wycliffe, declining all further aid from him upon his own behalf, and then went forth into the world to battle for himself. One thing he resolved to do before settling down to the real business of life, and that was to visit the place where his mother had been made the victim of such baseness and treachery. He went down to South Sussex County, visited Rye, and all the places she had described to him, and thought of her there, as a fair and innocent girl, filled to the brim with joy and gayety. He saw the house, the Surrey mansion, where she had spent those eight short, happy weeks and longed to enter, that he might see the rooms where her gay laughter had rang out and her light and nimble feet had danced to tuneful measure.