“Reflect!--your brother in boyhood--in the dying hours of his mother, scarcely saved from the crime of a thief, flying from a friendly pursuit with a notorious reprobate; afterwards implicated in some discreditable transaction about a horse, rejecting all--every hand that could save him, clinging by choice to the lowest companions and the meanest-habits, disappearing from the country, and last seen, ten years ago--the beard not yet on his chin--with that same reprobate of whom I have spoken, in Paris; a day or so only before his companion, a coiner--a murderer--fell by the hands of the police! You remember that when, in your seventeenth year, you evinced some desire to retake your name--nay, even to re-find that guilty brother--I placed before you, as a sad and terrible duty, the newspaper that contained the particulars of the death and the former adventures of that wretched accomplice, the notorious Gawtrey. And,--telling you that Mr. Beaufort had long since written to inform me that his own son and Lord Lilburne had seen your brother in company with the miscreant just before his fate--nay, was, in all probability, the very youth described in the account as found in his chamber and escaping the pursuit--I asked you if you would now venture to leave that disguise--that shelter under which you would for ever be safe from the opprobrium of the world--from the shame that, sooner or later, your brother must bring upon your name!” “It is true--it is true!” said the pretended nephew, in a tone of great anguish, and with trembling lips which the blood had forsaken. “Horrible to look either to his past or his future! But--but--we have heard of him no more--no one ever has learned his fate. Perhaps--perhaps” (and he seemed to breathe more freely)--“my brother is no more!” And poor Catherine--and poor Philip---had it come to this? Did the one brother feel a sentiment of release, of joy, in conjecturing the death--perhaps the death of violence and shame--of his fellow-orphan? Mr. Spencer shook his head doubtingly, but made no reply. The young man sighed heavily, and strode on for several paces in advance of his protector, then, turning back, he laid his hand on his shoulder. “Sir,” he said in a low voice and with downcast eyes, “you are right: this disguise--this false name--must be for ever borne! Why need the Beauforts, then, ever know who and what I am? Why not as your nephew--nephew to one so respected and exemplary--proffer my claims and plead my cause?”