“I cannot bear it any longer. I must confess at last. God grant I have not done you irreparable wrong.”
“Me!”
“You! You are one of the Browns of the County Mayo; the youngest son of that Captain Brown, who, when he was not much older than you, fought against Cromwell and lost his patrimony, but who afterwards, having been an exile with Charles II. regained it, though not till several years after the Restoration.”
“And what do you know of him or his family?” I asked curiously.
“Not much more than I have told you,” he replied, to my surprise, “except that your father went abroad again, and died not long after you were born.”
“That is so,” I said.
“Your mother had not received a communication from him for some time prior to his death.”
“But how do you know that?”
“Let me go on,” he replied, “I shall be the sooner finished. He died in Madrid, and he sent home papers and valuables through a Spanish Capuchin monk, who was visiting Ireland on a mission, which, I understood, was part political and part religious.”
“From whom did you learn this?”