“I can’t say I exactly remember just at this moment,” said the old man, after a little pause. “It wasn’t like a Mortimer name; it was--nay, stay,--it was one of the cotton-spinners’ names; I remember I thought of the spinning-jenny directly; something in that way; I can’t tell exactly what it was.” I could scarcely stand. I could scarcely keep silent; and yet I durst not, for something that choked the voice in my throat, suggest my father’s name boldly to his recollection. I hurried away and threw myself on a chair in my own room. All was silent there; but with just a door between us Lizzie was playing with my boy; and his crows of infant delight, and her soft but homely voice, seemed to break in upon the solitude I wanted. I rose from that retreat, and went down to our little drawing room. There it was Domenico’s voice, round and full, singing, whistling, talking, all in a breath. Nowhere could I get quiet enough to think over the extraordinary information I had just received. Or, rather, indeed it was not either Lizzie’s voice, or Domenico’s, but the agitation and tumult in my own mind; the beating of my heart, and the stir and restlessness that rose in me, that prevented me from thinking. Could it be possible that my father’s languid prophecy, which Aunt Connor reported so lightly, had truth in it after all? The idea excited me beyond the power of thinking. I went out and came in. I took up various kinds of work and threw them down again; I could do nothing till Harry came in, and I had told him. Then I fancied there might possibly seem some sense and coherence in the news. If this were to come true, then what prospects might be dawning upon us! In this sudden illumination my past dread returned to me, as a fear which has been forgotten for a time always does. The war! if Harry’s wife turned out a great heiress, must not Harry himself cease to be a soldier and enter into his fortune? Ah me! but he would not; he would not if I should ask him on my knees; not, at least, till he had taken his chance of getting killed like all the rest. This threw me back, with scarcely a moment’s interval, into the full tide of those thoughts which had tortured me before we came to Chester. I got up from my chair and began to walk about the room in the restlessness of great sudden apprehension and terror. All my trouble came back. My fears had but been asleep, the real circumstances were unchanged; even to-day, this very day, Harry might be ordered to the war. He saw my nervous, troubled look in a moment when he came in; he was struck by it at once. “You look as you once looked in Edinburgh, Milly,” he said, coming up to me; “what is the matter? Something has happened while I have been away?”