"Harry, there are graver matters first," I said; "there is a plot against you--they want to say--_he_ wants to say--that--that--you are only Brian Southcote's _heir_--you are not his son. I suppose he thought it would give me pleasure;--he told me--it is horrible! that Cottiswoode would be _mine_. Harry! think, if this should be true, what a frightful punishment to me! I should never have believed it for a moment, had it not looked so just a penalty for all my sins against you. Tell me, Harry--say it is impossible that such a fatal mistake should be." The color rose upon my husband's face, and he raised his head with an involuntary gesture of pride and defiance. It _was_ a Southcote face! I could not be mistaken--all around were the portraits of our race, and I read them with a quick inspection as my anxious eye glanced from him for a moment. He was not like Edgar the Scholar now--my Harry could never have planned a demon's revenge upon unborn children--he was not like any one of them perhaps--but in his face I saw, as in a glass, reflections, momentary glances, of all the pictured faces round us. And when I turned to gaze upon himself again, once more I was overwhelmed with that shadow of my father in his resolute expression. Oh, monstrous invention!--how could any one have found all these shadowy likenesses in the face of a stranger? "Hester," he said gravely, "when Saville came to me last winter with some vague threats of his power to prove me an impostor, I almost wished at first that I could have yielded to him, and so restored to you the rights you were born to. But a man must be very wretched and debased indeed, when he can make up his mind to deprive himself of his name. Do you remember that you forbade me telling you what he had come to say? I carefully went over then, both by myself and with my lawyer, the proofs which were thought conclusive at a former time. I found no reason to doubt them, Hester--there was neither break nor weakness in the chain. You look at me doubtfully, wistfully--what do you wish me to say?" "That you are quite sure--quite sure," I said, "I am speaking folly, I know--but that you remember your father--that you are sure you are my uncle Brian's son." "That is easily done--I am quite sure," he said with perfect calmness; "but now, Hester, let me know what the fiction is. What does the fellow call me? I do not think his imagination is very brilliant--let me see." He took the papers--smoothed them out, and read them--at first with interest, then, as I thought, with surprise and amazement. "What does it mean?" he exclaimed, at last, turning to me; "I suppose you have the interpretation, Hester. What is all this about my poor little brother?--what does it mean?"