Leonard staggered, and then burst into a sudden paroxysm of tears.
"Oh, my own mother! my dead mother! Thou for whom I felt so mysterious a love,—thou from whom I took this poet soul! pardon me, pardon me! Hard on thee! Would that thou wert living yet, that I might comfort thee! What thou must have suffered!"
These words were sobbed forth in broken gasps from the depth of his heart. Then he caught up the letter again, and his thoughts were changed as his eyes fell upon the writer's shame and fear, as it were, of his very existence. All his native haughtiness returned to him. His crest rose, his tears dried. "Tell her," he said, with astern, unfaltering voice, "tell Mrs. Avenel that she is obeyed; that I will never seek her roof, never cross her path, never disgrace her wealthy son. But tell her, also, that I will choose my own way in life,—that I will not take from her a bribe for concealment. Tell her that I am nameless, and will yet make a name."
A name! Was this but an idle boast, or was it one of those flashes of conviction which are never belied, lighting up our future for one lurid instant, and then fading into darkness?
"I do not doubt it, my prave poy," said Dr. Morgan, growing exceedingly
Welsh in his excitement; "and perhaps you may find a father, who—"
"Father! who is he, what is he? He lives, then! But he has deserted me,—he must have betrayed her! I need him not. The law gives me no father."
The last words were said with a return of bitter anguish: then, in a calmer tone, he resumed, "But I should know who he is—as another one whose path I may not cross."
Dr. Morgan looked embarrassed, and paused in deliberation. "Nay," said he, at length, "as you know so much, it is surely best that you should know all."
The doctor then proceeded to detail, with some circumlocution, what we will here repeat from his account more succinctly.
Nora Avenel, while yet very young, left her native village, or rather the house of Lady Lansinere, by whom she had been educated and brought up, in order to accept the place of companion to a lady in London. One evening she suddenly presented herself at her father's house, and at the first sight of her mother's face she fell down insensible. She was carried to bed. Dr. Morgan (then the chief medical practitioner of the town) was sent for. That night Leonard came into the world, and his mother died. She never recovered her senses, never spoke intelligibly from the time she entered the house. "And never, therefore, named your father," said Dr. Morgan. "We knew not who he was."