“You are an insolent impostor!” cried Hannah, indignantly. “How dare you speak to me in that way? Your young woman, indeed! I should like the Baron to hear you! I don’t believe one word of your trumped-up story. I have no mother, nor father, and I never set eyes on you in my life before! If you presume to worry me again I shall give you into charge of the police.” “And you denies of them?” replied the young man, reproachfully. “I’m not so surprised at your saying as you don’t know _me_, for I give you a nasty slap in the face larst time we met--but to deny the mother as bore you and she a’dying--and with hardly a rag to ’er back, or food to eat--well! I wouldn’t ’ave your ’eart, for ever so! that I wouldn’t!” The Marchesa only replied by ringing the bell and summoning her footman. “Show this man out,” she said, “and take care that he is never admitted again. He is an impostor, and he has insulted me.” “Come! along with you!” cried the servant, as he hustled Joe from the room. “I’ll take good care you never shows your nose inside of our ’ouse again!” And so Joe Brushwood found himself upon the doorstep in shorter time than it takes to write the words. The Marchesa joined her husband in the drawing-room, triumphant. “Well! what had he to say to you?” demanded the Baron, as she entered. “Nothing! It was all a hoax! No more Joseph Brushwood--whoever he may be--than you are! A fellow with a begging letter, and who became so insolent when I refused to give him money, that I was obliged to ring for Watson to show him the door!” “You were quite right to refuse,” said the Baron, “I hate these begging letter writers. But how could he have got hold of the name of Joseph Brushwood?” “Invented it, most likely!” replied Hannah, as she commenced to read the evening papers. “But, my dear, that was the name of the young man you were engaged to,” began Karl von Steinberg. “Surely, you must remember!” “No! I don’t, and I don’t want to,” persisted his wife, “I never think of that horrible time! It is past now! I wish nothing better than to blot out the memory that it ever existed.” She returned to the perusal of her paper, and her husband, after regarding her for a few moments as if she were some extraordinary animal whom he could not possibly understand--left the room quietly, and went to his club. CHAPTER XVIII. “Why did Hannah pretend to have forgotten the fact that she had ever known Joseph Brushwood? What was her motive in refusing the prayer of her dying mother, to see her once again? Had her unexpected rise in life and position really made her oblivious of all that had gone before, or had her heart grown callous to the sufferings of her fellow-creatures?” These were the questions that puzzled the brain of Karl von Steinberg, as he walked meditatively down to his club that night.