“After? Ah, Mother, that is harder to remember still. A great tumult, cross voices, a sea of faces which all looked angry and terrified me, and then it suddenly changes like a dream to a great lonely expanse of shivering snow: and I and some others—whom, I know not—wander about in it—for centuries, as it appears to me. Then comes a blank, and then—you.”
“You remember better than I should have expected as to some things: others worse. Can you recollect no name save ‘Mother Isel’?”
“I can, but I don’t know whose they are. I can hear somebody call from the upper chamber—‘Gerard, is that you?’ and the pleasant-faced man says, ‘Tell Ermine’ something. That is what made me ask you, Mother. I met a man to-day in Cheapside who looked hard at me, and who made me think both of that pleasant-faced man, and also of the stern man; and as I had to wait for a cart to pass, another man and woman came and spoke to him, and he said to the woman, ‘Well, when are you coming to see Ermine?’ The face, and his curious, puzzled look at me, and the name, carried me back all at once to that house and the people there. He looked as if he thought he ought to know me, and could not tell exactly who I was. And just as I came away, I fancied I heard another word or two, spoken low as if not for me or somebody to hear—something about—‘like him and Agnes too.’ I wonder if I ever knew any one called Agnes? I have a faint impression that I did. Can you tell me, Mother?”
“I will tell thee, Ralph. But answer me first. Wert thou always called Ralph?”
“I cannot tell, Mother,” replied the youth, with an interested look. “I fancy, somehow, that I once used to be called something not that exactly, and yet very like it. I have tried to recover it, and cannot. Was it some pet name used by somebody?”
“No. It was your own name—which Ralph is not.”
“O Mother! what was it?”
“Wait a moment. Did you ever hear of any one called—Countess?”
She brought out the second name with hesitation, as if she spoke it unwillingly. The youth shook his head.
“Let that pass.”