“Very well, Poley, I will obey you. Cleve and uncle are shut up in the parlor, talking business, I suppose, so I will sit here and sew until dinner time, or until I am called,” said Palma. Mrs. Pole got up and went to the shelf in the closet and returned with Palma’s workbasket, in which her sewing was already neatly arranged, and set it down on the floor beside its owner. And Palma selected a tiny, half-finished garment that might have fitted a medium doll, and began to sew some lace edging on it. And soon, in the gayety of her heart, she began to sing at her work. Mrs. Pole got her own basket of infirm socks and stockings and began to darn. CHAPTER XXXI UNCLE AND NEPHEW While they were so occupied Mr. Cleve had closed the parlor door, shutting himself in with his nephew for a long talk over their past and present lives and future arrangements—though the earthly future of the aged man would necessarily be very brief. The old gentleman wished rather to hear than to talk, and so he only briefly reverted to the main events of his own life—his early disappointment in love when his betrothed bride was taken ill and died a few days before their intended marriage, and was buried in her bridal dress on her wedding day. “Yet, no; she was not buried, only her left-off body was buried. She lived! Oh! how vividly! how blessedly! how potently she lives! And I shall soon see her again! After seventy years, my boy! after seventy years! But what are they, in view of the life everlasting?” said the aged man in conclusion of this reminiscence. Cleve Stuart made no reply, but pressed his uncle’s hand in reverential silence. Then the old man spoke of the nephews who had borne his own name and expected to inherit his estate, but who had both died, unmarried, of wounds received in battle. Then he spoke of his long, vain search of his niece’s son, Cleve Stuart, and of the chance by which he found him. “And now, my boy, that I have found you, let me say that I find you all that I could wish, and your young wife—charming! But tell me about her, Cleve. Who is she?” he inquired. “Palma is the daughter of the late James Jordan Hay and the granddaughter of the late John Hayward Hay, of Haymore, in the North Biding of Yorkshire, England,” replied Stuart. “Why—indeed! I knew the old squire. When I went to Europe in my young manhood I reached England in the autumn, and through a letter of introduction got an invitation to Mr. Storr’s, of Hoxton, where I stayed for the Melton hunts and met Mr. Hay, of Haymore. Yes, the Hays, of Haymore, are an ancient, historical, almost, I might say, an illustrious family. I congratulate you, my boy, but more on the personal merit of your young wife than on her family connections. Who represents the house now at Haymore? Which of the three lads I found there?” Stuart, as briefly as possible, gave him the later family history.