"Indeed, I fear I cannot promise that either, for I have a very great pressure of business; but if I can possibly manage to go, without infringing upon my duties, I shall be grateful for the privilege and very happy to avail myself of it; for--do you know, sir?--I was born in that neighborhood and passed my childhood and youth there. I love the old place, and almost long to see the old hut where I lived, and the hall where I went to school, and the wooded valley that lies between them, where I gathered wild-flowers and fruits in summer and nuts in winter, and--my mother's grave," said the unconscious son, speaking confidentially, and looking straight into his father's eyes. "Ishmael," said Herman Brudenell, in a faltering voice, and forgetting to be formal, "you must come to me: that grave should draw you, if nothing else; it is a pious pilgrimage when a son goes to visit his mother's grave." There was something in this new friend's words, look, and manner that always drew out the young man's confidence, and he said, in a voice trembling with emotion: "She died young, sir; and oh! so sorrowfully! She was only nineteen, two years younger than I am now; and her son was motherless the hour he was born." Violent emotion shook the frame of Herman Brudenell. He had not entered the room with any intention of making a disclosure to Ishmael; but he felt now that--come life, come death, come whatever might of it--he must claim Nora's son. "Ishmael," he began, in a voice shaken with agitation, "I knew your mother." "You, sir!" exclaimed the young man in surprise. "Yes, I knew her and her sister, naturally, for they were tenants of mine." "I knew that they lived on the outskirts of the Brudenell estate; but I did not know you were personally acquainted with them, sir; for I thought that you had resided generally in Europe." "Not all the time; I was at Brudenell Hall when--you were born and your mother went to heaven, Ishmael." Some of the elder man's agitation communicated itself to the younger, who half arose from his seat and looked intently at the speaker. "I knew your mother in those days, Ishmael. She was not only one of the most beautiful women of her day, but one of the purest, noblest, and best." Herman Brudenell hesitated. And Ishmael, who had dropped again into his seat, bent eagerly forward, holding his breath while he listened. Herman continued. "You resemble her in person and character, Ishmael. All that is best and noblest and most attractive in you, Ishmael, is derived under Divine Providence from your mother." "I know it! Oh, I know it!" "And, Ishmael, I loved your mother!" "Oh, Heaven!" breathed the young man, in sickening, deadly apprehension; for well he remembered that this Mr. Herman Brudenell was the husband of the Countess of Hurstmonceux at the very time of which he now spoke. "Ishmael, do not look so cruelly distressed. I loved her, she loved me in return, she crowned my days with joy, and--"