could my parents have left me in the care of a highwayman! ’Tis true that he received the royal pardon: but that pardon----Ah! the _Register_ says that it was procured through the interest of Lady Hatfield--that Dykes, an officer of justice, was present at the time when that lady announced----Just heavens! a light breaks in upon my soul----Oh! no--no----and yet that resemblance----May God have mercy upon me!” And the young man, groaning bitterly--bitterly, in the anguish of his spirit, fell back in his chair--covering his face with his hands. Yes--a light had indeed broken in upon him, elucidating a terrible mystery in a terrible manner! Lady Georgiana Hatfield had procured the royal pardon:--Lady Georgiana Hatfield must therefore have had strong reasons thus to exert herself in behalf of a convicted felon, who had passed through the hands of the hangman, but had been recalled to life and restored to the world in some wondrous manner. But of what nature were those potent reasons? Naturally did it strike Charles Hatfield that _love_ must have been the cause;--and when he recollected the resemblance which existed between his own father and that Thomas Rainford who had once been his friend and protector, it flashed to his mind that he in whom Lady Hatfield had shown such tender interest--even to the compromising of her fair fame in the eyes of the world,--he for whom she had so far stepped aside from the precise course of female delicacy as to implore the royal pardon,--he it must be who was her husband! Yes--yes: it was now as clear as the sun at noon-day:--Mr. Hatfield and Thomas Rainford were one and the same individual,--and he--Charles Hatfield--was the son of a highwayman who had been tried--convicted--and ushered through all the ignominious ordeal of the scaffold! For several minutes the young man sat motionless--crushed, stupefied, astounded by the appalling truth which he had elicited from his fatal investigations into the past:--for several minutes it must have been a mere balancing of chances whether he should awake from that dreadful reverie to the light of reason once more, or suddenly start up a howling, hopeless maniac! But this latter condition was not to be his frightful doom. By degrees--by very slow degrees, he recovered so much of his self-possession and composure as to be enabled to look his misfortune in the face, and even fall into additional reflections on the subject.