A gasping sound of suddenly suspended breath from Ishmael. "I made her my wife," continued Herman Brudenell, in a grave and earnest voice. "It was you then!" cried Ishmael, shaking with agitation. "It was I!" Silence like a pall fell between them. "Oh, Ishmael! my son! my son! speak to me! give me your hand!" groaned Herman Brudenell. "She was your wife! Yet she died of want, exposure, and grief!" said Nora's son, standing pale and stony before him. "And I--live with a breaking heart! a harder fate, Ishmael. Since her death, I have been a wifeless, childless, homeless wanderer over the wide world! Oh, Ishmael! my son! my son! give me your hand!" "I am your mother's son! She was your wife, you say; yet she never bore your name! She was your wife; yet her son and yours bears her maiden name! She was your wife; yet she perished miserably in her early youth; and undeserved reproach is suffered to rest upon her memory! Oh, sir! if indeed you were her husband and my father, as you claim to be, explain these things before I give you my hand! for when I give my hand, honor and respect must go with it," said Ishmael in a grave, sweet, earnest tone. "Is it possible that Hannah has never told you? I thought she would have told you everything, except the name of your father." "She told me everything that she could tell without violating the oath of secrecy by which she was hound; but what she told me was not satisfactory." "Sit down then, Ishmael, sit down; and though to recall this woeful history will be to tear open old wounds afresh, I will do so; and when you have heard it, you will know how blameless we both--your mother and myself--really were, and how deep has been the tragedy of my life as well as hers--the difference between us being that hers is a dead trouble, from which she rests eternally, while mine is a living and life-long sorrow!" Ishmael again dropped into his chair and gave undivided attention to the speaker. And Mr. Brudenell, after a short pause, commenced and gave a narrative of his own eventful life, beginning with his college days, and detailing all the incidents of his youthful career until it culminated in the dreadful household wreck that had killed Nora, exiled his family and blasted his own happiness forever. Ishmael listened with the deepest sympathy. It was indeed the tearing open of old wounds in Herman Brudenell's breast; and it was the inflicting of new ones in Ishmael's heart. It was an hour of unspeakable distress to both. Herman did not spare himself in the relation; yet in the end Ishmael exculpated his father from all blame. We know indeed that in his relations with Nora he was blameless, unless his fatal haste could be called a fault. And so for his long neglect of Ishmael, which really was a great sin, and the greatest he had ever committed, Ishmael never gave a thought to that, it was only a sin against himself, and Ishmael was not selfish enough to feel or resent it.