“Harry,” cried I, with a little excitement, suddenly remembering that I had news to tell him. “I have found the Park and the Sarah; I have found the estate I am heiress to; I have found out something far more important than that old red-brick house; and, do you know, hearing of this brought everything to my mind directly, all my terrors and troubles. Never mind, I’ll tell you what I heard in the first place. It was from my poor gentleman upstairs.” Harry, who had heard me with great interest up to this point, suddenly shrugged up his shoulders, and put his lips together with that disdainful provoking whew! with which men think they can always put one down. “Oh, indeed, you need not be scornful!” said I; “he writes papers for a lawyer, and had a very good way of knowing. He says Mr. Cresswell had an advertisement all ready to be put into the Times some months ago, for one Mortimer, whose name reminded him of a spinning-jenny. But it never was sent to the paper, because Miss Cresswell went out to the Park, and it was thought the ladies would make her their heiress; but it was supposed there was some flaw in their title, and that this Mortimer would be the true heir.” “The Park, and the ladies, and Miss Cresswell, and it was supposed? By Jove, Milly!” cried Harry, with great vehemence, “do you see how important this is?--have you no better grounds than it was thought, and, it was supposed?” “You are unreasonable, Harry; I only heard what he had to say; and, besides, it might not be my father, nor the same people at all. _He_ could not tell me, I only heard what he had to say.” But this explanation did not satisfy Harry; he became as excited as I had been, but in a different way. He snatched up his hat, and would have gone at once, on the impulse of the moment, to see Mr. Cresswell, had not I detained him. The news had the same influence on Harry that it had on me. It woke us both out of that happy quiescence into which we had fallen when we came here. We were no longer dwelling at peace, safe in each other’s society; once more we were thrown into all the agitation that belonged to our condition and prospects. Harry was a soldier, ready to be sent off any day to the camp and the trenches, gravely anxious about a home and shelter for his wife and child; I, a soldier’s wife, ready at any moment to have the light of my eyes torn from me, and my life cut in twain. After the first hurried burst of consultation, we were both silent, thinking on these things. Certainly it was better that we should have been aroused. The reality coming at once, all unapprehended and unthought of, would otherwise have been an intolerable blow. Now there was little fear that we could forget again.