He did not seem disposed to speak many now; he went into Miss Bridget’s dusky little parlour, lingering a moment at the door, and bending forward in reflection from the little sloping mirror on the wall. The young man was greatly moved, silent with inexpressible emotion; he went up to Marian first, and, in the presence of them all, kissed her little trembling hand and her white cheek; then he drew her forward with him, holding her up with his own arm, which trembled too, and came direct to Miss Anastasia, who was seated, pale, and making gigantic efforts to command herself, in old Miss Bridget’s chair. “This is my bride,” said Louis firmly, yet with quivering lips. “What are we to call _you_?” The old lady looked at him for a moment, vainly endeavouring to retain her self-possession--then sprang up suddenly, grasped him in her arms, and broke forth into such a cry of weeping as never had been heard before under this peaceful roof. “What you will! what you will! my boy, my heir, my father’s son!” cried Miss Anastasia, lifting up her voice. No one moved, or spoke a word--it was like one of those old agonies of thanksgiving in the old Scriptures, when a Joseph or a Jacob, parted for half a patriarch’s lifetime, “fell upon his neck and wept.” When this moment of extreme agitation was over, the principal actors in the family drama came again into a moderate degree of calmness: Louis was almost solemn in his extreme youthful gravity. The young man was changed in a moment, as, perhaps, nothing but this overwhelming flood of honour and prosperity could have changed him. He desired to see the evidence and investigate his own claims thoroughly, as it was natural he should; then he asked Charlie to go out with him, for there was not a great deal of room in this little house, for private conference. The two young men went forth together through those quiet well-known lanes, upon which Louis gazed with a giddy eye. “This should have come to me in some place where I was a stranger,” he said with excitement; “it might have seemed more credible, more reasonable, in a less familiar place. Here, where I have been an outcast and dishonoured all my life--here!” “Your own property,” said Charlie. “I’m not a poetical man, you know--it is no use trying--but I’d come to a little sentiment, I confess, if I were you.” “In the mean time there are other people concerned,” said Louis, taking Charlie’s arm, and turning him somewhat hurriedly away from the edge of the wood, which at this epoch of his fortunes, the scene of so many despairing fancies, was rather more than he chose to experiment upon. “You are not poetical, Charlie. I do not suppose it has come to your turn yet--but we do not want poetry to-night; there are other people concerned. So far as I can see, your case--I scarcely can call it mine, who have had no hand in it--is clear as daylight--indisputable. Is it so?--you know better than me.” “Indisputable,” said Charlie, authoritatively.