The boy was browsing one afternoon among these illuminated volumes, enjoying the beauty of their convoluted designs and brilliantly-pictured legends, when he saw something which sent the blood back upon his heart in a curious little shock. He had taken down a Book of Hours, _Horae Beatae Virginis Mariae ad Usum Romanum, cum Calendario_--a fair little volume in Roman letter with splendid wood-cuts--when, in turning over the leaves he discovered a name upon the title page--_Jane Middleton Baggott: her booke:_ 1554: _at Gray’s Inne_. He was squatting on the floor. Gently he put the little volume down in his lap, and turned his head to gaze out of the great west window, which looked into the Court. It was very still; a light brooding mist filled the air; there were swallows skimming and diving under the eaves. But he saw nothing material: only the softness and quietude of things seemed consonant with the wistful abstraction his eyes expressed. ‘One sister; but she died.’ Clerivault’s unwilling words came back to his mind--and again others spoken by his Uncle, when he had taken his face between his hands and read some likeness there. Jane Middleton--had that been her name; and was it the memory of that dead sister which had seemed to move the brother so deeply when gazing into his eyes? Middleton! and he himself was so called--why? A queer unforgotten word once uttered by his lost love recurred to him--not for the first time. Was here the clue to the long riddle? Some shadowy suspicion of the truth had already flitted through his soul--from ages ago--from the day when the pale pretty lady had stopped her horse to speak to him. He felt again her kiss upon his baby lips; he felt---- Suddenly his eyes were hot with tears: they had come unexpected, from out of nowhere, and had taken him by surprise. He sat very still, battling with his emotion; and in a little he had quite mastered it. Then he took up the Book of Hours, and rose to return it to its place; but first, in a quick impulse, he bent and kissed the name upon the title. ‘She called herself my first lover,’ he whispered--‘I remember it now so well--and her pretty one, and her babe. She was sad and beautiful; and I hated him that rode with her.’ And now in thought he hated the handsome sinister cavalier more than ever--hated him with the hatred of a child’s rebellion against misused authority and immitigable wrong. All the rest of that day Brion went very quiet. He seemed preoccupied; he was grateful for little ordinary services; almost submissive to those who rendered them. It was as if some shock to his young pride had humbled him to the dust. But his mind was restlessly busy. He had never seen his Uncle since he parted from him in the _Cock_ tavern; he had felt some anticipatory awe over their re-meeting; now he wanted him to return, that he might face him with a direct question. He meant to put that question; whencesoever he derived it, he had an imperious spirit.