"And you never even suspected anything of this until last night?" said Mrs. Grace, who now began slowly to recover the use of the ordinary faculties of the mind. "Never. Nor did my mother. In the long paper my father left in charge of my mother he says he only heard the facts from some descendant of Sir Hanbury Williams. When he found out who he really was he seemed to have been seized with a positive horror of the blood in his veins, not because of what it had done in the past, but of what it might do in the future. He was a careful, timid man. He thought the best way to kill the seed of ambition in the veins of a Hanbury would be to reduce the position of the family from that of people of independent means to that of traders. Hence he went into business in the City; although he had no need of more money, he made a second fortune. He says his theory was that, in these days, no man who ever made up parcels of tea, or offered hides for sale, could aspire to a throne, and that no man of business who was doing well at home, ever became a conspirator abroad. When he saw I was taking a great interest in the struggles of parties in France, he thought the best thing he could do would be to let me know who I was, and leave me his opinion as to the folly of risking anything in a foreign cause, when one could find ample opportunity of employing one's public spirit usefully in England, for notwithstanding his foreign blood, my father was an Englishman with Englishmen against all the world. His instructions to my mother were, that if, at any time, I showed signs of abandoning myself to excess in politics, I was to get the paper, for if I leaned too much to the people the knowledge that I had the blood of a King in me might modify my ardour; and if I seemed likely to adopt the cause of any foreign ruler or pretender, I might be restrained by a knowledge that, as far as the experience of one of my ancestors went, unwelcome rulers meant personal misery and national ruin." "And, Mr. Hanbury, what do you purpose doing? Do you intend changing your name and claiming your rights?"