“It is because I was your father’s oldest friend, young man,” returned Mr. Brownlow. “It is because the hopes and wishes of young and happy years were bound up with him, and that fair creature of his blood and kindred who rejoined her God in youth and left me here a solitary, lonely man,—it is because he knelt with me beside his only sister’s death-bed when he was yet a boy, on the morning that would—but Heaven willed otherwise—have made her my young wife,—it is because my seared heart clung to him from that time forth through all his trials and errors, till he died,—it is because old recollections and associations fill my heart, and even the sight of you brings with it old thoughts of him,—it is all these things that move me to treat you gently now—yes, Edward Leeford, even now—and blush for your unworthiness who bear the name.” “What has the name to do with it?” asked the other, after contemplating, half in silence, and half in dogged wonder, the agitation of his companion. “What is the name to me?” “Nothing,” replied Mr. Brownlow, “nothing to you. But it was _hers_, and even at this distance of time brings back to me, an old man, the glow and thrill which I once felt only to hear it repeated by a stranger. I am very glad you have changed it—very—very.” “This is all mighty fine,” said Monks (to retain his assumed designation) after a long silence, during which he had jerked himself in sullen defiance to and fro, and Mr. Brownlow had sat shading his face with his hand. “But what do you want with me?” “You have a brother,” said Mr. Brownlow rousing himself—“a brother, the whisper of whose name in your ear, when I came behind you in the street, was in itself almost enough to make you accompany me hither in wonder and alarm.” “I have no brother,” replied Monks. “You know I was an only child. Why do you talk to me of brothers? You know that, as well as I.” “Attend to what I do know and you may not,” said Mr. Brownlow. “I shall interest you by and by. I know that of the wretched marriage, into which family pride and the most sordid and narrowest of all ambition forced your unhappy father when a mere boy, you were the sole and most unnatural issue,” returned Mr. Brownlow. “I don’t care for hard names,” interrupted Monks with a jeering laugh. “You know the fact, and that’s enough for me.”