The girl stepped swiftly to the open window, and pushed the heavy folds of hair behind her ears. “I feel my blood all rushing to my brain, and roaring 'Ruin!'” murmured she. “If this sudden fear has any real foundation, then indeed am I hoist with my own petard. No wonder she warned me against alliance with her race, if what I here suspect is true. They will need wellborn suitors themselves, she meant, to make up for what is lacking in their blood, and mayhap money too. The will of old Sir Robert may be disputed. The Succession--but no, I had forgotten--there is no one to succeed save her two sons, for they have not a relative beyond themselves in the world, these Lisgards; but the title--that would be lost, of course. That's what she hinted when she said I might not gain the thing I counted on, even though I won Sir Richard. He cannot know of it; he could not be so proud if he had the least suspicion of any blot in his own scutcheon. How he would wither if one said to him: 'Thou Bastard!' And yet I gravely doubt whether this discreet madam, his mother, has not one day tripped. 'What know you of my youth, girl?' cried she a while ago, white, as I thought, with anger; but it was fear, it seems. She comes here alone to find out for herself by study what secret course to follow, or what hidden dangers to avoid, having no counsellor in whom she can confide. That seems so far certain, or she would surely ask her son himself, being a lawyer, or that wise Mr Arthur Haldane, whom I so honestly dislike, for their advice. It may be all this bodes as ill for Walter as for his brother; it may be that it bodes the younger the best of fortune, and the elder the worst. That would be a brave day, indeed, for some one, on which the proud young baronet should sink to plain Mr Richard, and the poor captain rise to be Sir Walter Lisgard! And, again, there may be nothing in all this, after all. Time will doubtless shew, and it shall be my task to hurry Time's footsteps towards the discovery.” CHAPTER XI. UP EARLY.