"Ralph," said the lady, when we were again alone, "I have, through the whole of my life, always detested scenes, and, to the utmost of my power, ever repelled all violent emotions. I am not now going to give you a history of my life--to make my confessions, and ask pardon of you and God, and then die--nonsense; but I must say that your fate has been somewhat strangely connected with my own. I acknowledge to you, at once, that I am a fallen woman--but, as I never had the beauty, so I never had the repentance, of a Magdalen. I fell to one of the greatest upon the earth. I still think that it was a glorious fate. I know that you are going to wound me deeply. I will take it meekly; may it be, in some measure, looked upon as a small expiation for my one great error! But, spare me, as long as you are able, the name of this person you have described with such bitterness--it may not, after all, be he who has been almost the only bitterness that has yet poisoned my cup of a too pleasurable existence--'tis pleasurable, alas! until, even in this, my eleventh hour. Tell me all, and then I shall be able to judge how much it may be my duty to reveal to you." It was a fine study, that of observing the gradual emotion of this worldly and magnificent woman, as I proceeded with my eventful tale. I took it up only at that period when Joshua Daunton first made his application to me to be allowed to enter the _Eos_. The beginning of my narrative fell coldly upon her, and her features were strung up to that tension which I had often before observed in persons who were bracing up their nerves to undergo a dangerous surgical operation. They were certainly not impassive, for, in the fixed eyes that glared upon me, there was a strange restlessness, though not of motion. The first symptoms of emotion that I could perceive took place when I described the lash descending upon the shrinking shoulders of Daunton. She clasped her hands firmly together, and upturned her eyes, as if imploring Heaven for mercy, or entreating it for vengeance. I perceived, as I proceeded, that I was gradually losing ground in her affections--that she was, in spite of herself, espousing the cause of my pledged enemy; and when I told her of the defiance that I had received in the sick-bay, she murmured forth, "Well done! well done!" followed by a name that was not mine. When I related to her the documents that he had shown me to convince me that he was no impostor, she said, "Ralph, it is enough--it is of little consequence now what name you may give him. _He is my son_!" "And my half-brother?" "Oh no, no, young sir! Disgraced as he has been, a nobler blood than that of Rattlin flows in his veins. Degraded, disgraced as he is, neither on the side of the father nor of the mother need he blush for his parentage. But you are his sworn enemy--I can now listen more calmly to what you have to say. But, graceless as he is, he should not have denied his own mother."