“My name?” he laughed softly and bitterly. “My name?” He reached for an ebony cane that stood beside his chair. “I had thought you understood.” He heaved himself to his feet, and she forgot to caution him against exertion. “I have no right to any name,” he told her. “My father was a man too full of worldly affairs to think of trifles. And so it befell that before he went his ways he forgot to marry the poor lady who was my mother. I might take what name I chose. I chose Caryll. But you will understand, Mistress Winthrop,” and he looked her fully in the face, attempting in vain to dissemble the agony in his eyes--he who a little while ago had been almost happy--“that if ever it should happen that I should come to love a woman who is worthy of being loved, I who am nameless have no name to offer her.” Revelation illumined her mind as in a flash. She looked at him. “Was--was that what you meant, that day we thought you dying, when you said to me--for it was to me you spoke, to me alone--that it was better so?” He inclined his head. “That is what I meant,” he answered. Her lids drooped; her cheeks were very white, and he remarked the swift, agitated surge of her bosom, the fingers that were plucking at one another in her lap. Without looking up, she spoke again. “If you had the love to offer, what would the rest matter? What is a name that it should weigh so much?” “Heyday!” He sighed, and smiled very wistfully. “You are young, child. In time you will understand what place the world assigns to such men as I. It is a place I could ask no woman to share. Such as I am, could I speak of love to any woman?” “Yet you spoke of love once to me,” she reminded him, scarcely above her breath, and stabbed him with the recollection. “In an hour of moonshine, an hour of madness, when I was a reckless fool that must give tongue to every impulse. You reproved me then in just the terms my case deserved. Hortensia,” he bent towards her, leaning on his cane, “'tis very sweet and merciful in you to recall it without reproach. Recall it no more, save to think with scorn of the fleering coxcomb who was so lost to the respect that is due to so sweet a lady. I have told you so much of myself to-day that you may.” “Decidedly,” came a shrill, ironical voice from the arbor's entrance, “I may congratulate you, sir, upon the prodigious strides of your recovery.” Mr. Caryll straightened himself from his stooping posture, turned and made Lady Ostermore a bow, his whole manner changed again to that which was habitual to him. “And no less decidedly, my lady,” said he with a tight-lipped smile, “may I congratulate your ladyship's son upon that happy circumstance, which is--as I have learned--so greatly due to the steps your ladyship took--for which I shall be ever grateful--to ensure that I should be made whole again.” CHAPTER XIII. THE FORLORN HOPE