He stood and waited for her outside with a new life, it seemed, thrilling through him. His father? He had once had a father, then--a man who had done his duty in the world--not a tyrant, who hated him. The idea of his mother did not so much move him; for somehow the dead woman whose reputation he had vindicated, the sweet young face in Clare’s picture, was his mother to Edgar in spite of all. He could not turn her out of his imagination. But his father! A new spring of curiosity, which was salvation to him, sprang up in his heart. Presently Mrs. Murray came out again, in her old-fashioned shawl and bonnet. Her dress veiled the dignity of her head. It gave him a sort of shudder to think of Clare looking at this woman, whom she had wanted to be kind to--to treat as a dependent--and knowing her to be his grandmother. She looked a little like Mrs. Fillpot, in her old-fashioned bonnet and shawl--he scorned himself for the thought, and yet it came back to him--very much like Mrs. Fillpot until you saw her face; and Edgar was made of common flesh and blood, and it went to his heart. He walked up the village street by her side with the strangest feelings. If she wanted him, it would be his duty, perhaps, to go with her--to provide for her old age--to do her the service of a son. She had a hold on him which nobody else in the world had. And yet---- To be very kind, tender-hearted, and generous to your conventional inferiors is so easy; but to take a family among them into your very heart, and acknowledge them as your own!---- Edgar shivered with a pang that ran through every nerve; and yet it had to be done! He was more reconciled to it by the time he reached the Rectory. Mrs. Murray did not say another word to conciliate or attract his regard, but she began a long soft-voiced monologue--the story of his family. She told him of his father, who had been a doctor, and had died of typhus fever, caught among the poor, to whom he had dedicated his life; of his mother, who had broken her heart; of all her own children, his relations, who were scattered over the world. “We’re no rich nor grand, but we are folk that none need think shame of,” she said, “no one. We’ve done our duty by land and by sea, and served God, and wronged no man--all but me; and the wrong I did is made right, oh my bonnie lad, thanks to you.”