The old man listened with sublime patience. Another evidence of how vile a thing was this dead son, whom he had mourned with that strange unreasoning tenderness which death will awaken in the coldest hearts. ‘Say no more, child,’ he said gently, when Lucille had pleaded for pardon almost as if the wrong done by Ferdinand Sivewright had been wholly hers. ‘You were foolish and loving, and pitied him and trusted him, although I had often warned you that he was of all men most unworthy of pity or trust. Don’t cry, Lucille; I’m not angry with you. Perhaps I might have been persuaded to believe in him myself if he had pleaded long enough. That tongue of his was subtle as the serpent’s. And so it was my son who robbed me! He crept into my house in secret, and used his first opportunity to plunder. He is dead; let us forget him. The tenderest mercy God and man could show him would be oblivion.’ And from this hour Homer Sivewright spoke of his son no more. CHAPTER VIII. AUNT GLENLYNE. Once assured that there was no blot upon Lucille’s parentage, Lucius had no longer any motive for withholding the result of his researches from her whom they most nearly concerned. He spent his evening at Cedar House, as usual, on the day of his interview with Mr. Pullman; and after tea, when Mr. Sivewright had retired, seized the opportunity to show Lucille the little packet of letters, and to relate his adventures at Rouen and in Paris. Lucille wept many tears as that story of the past was slowly unfolded to her—wept for the sorrows of the mother she vaguely remembered watching like a guardian angel beside her little bed. ‘Dear mother! and to think that in your brief life there was so much sorrow!’ she said mournfully. Her father—as revealed to her by those letters, and by all that Lucius told her—seemed worldly and even cruel. He had suffered his young wife to fade and die in severance from all she loved. For the sake of what?—his uncle’s fortune. He had acted a lie rather than forego that worldly gain. O foolish dream of a father’s love! From first to last it had been only a delusion for Lucille. She uttered no word of reproach against the dead. But she separated her mother’s letters from the others in the little packet, and asked if she might keep them. ‘These and the miniature are the only memorials of the mother I lost so soon,’ she said. ‘They are very precious to me.’ ‘Keep them, dearest, but do not cultivate sad memories. Your life has been too long clouded; but, please God, there shall be less shadow than sunshine henceforward.’ He told Lucille of his idea of taking her to Brighton in a day or two, to see Miss Glenlyne. ‘The lady with whom my mother came to England,’ she said. ‘Yes, I should very much like to see any one who knew my mother.’ ‘We will go the day after to-morrow, then, dear, if grandpapa will give us permission. We can come back to town the same evening, and Janet can go with us to play propriety, if you like.’