I pressed her hand to my lips; but my heart was too full tot speak for a moment or so, and then I partially changed the subject.
“Well, and this rivalry estranged them more? And who was the lady?”
“Your father never told me, and I never asked,” said my mother, simply. “But she was very different from me, I know. Very accomplished, very beautiful, very highborn.”
“For all that, my father was a lucky man to escape her. Pass on. What did the Captain do?”
“Why, about that time your grandfather died; and shortly after an aunt, on the mother’s side, who was rich and saving, died, and unexpectedly left each sixteen thousand pounds. Your uncle, with his share, bought back, at an enormous price, the old castle and some land round it, which they say does not bring him in three hundred a year. With the little that remained, he purchased a commission in the army; and the brothers met no more till last week, when Roland suddenly arrived.”
“He did not marry this accomplished young lady?”
“No! but he married another, and is a widower.”
“Why, he was as inconstant as my father, and I am sure without so good an excuse. How was that?”
“I don’t know. He says nothing about it.”
“Has he any children?”