The Earl cast himself upon his bosom. "You are my son, you are my son!" he said; "I know and feel it, though there is much that I do not comprehend, there is much still to be explained. You are like your mother! Oh! too like your mother! Hating myself for having wronged her, I hated her because she was wronged; and yet, though it seem madness and folly to say it, I loved her still. But I knew not that she had had a son, or I would never have acted as I did act; I would never have wronged her as I did wrong her. A vague suspicion of the truth, a wild whirling phantom of the imagination, did cross my mind once in years long gone; and once, too, within these few days, when first I saw you in that tower. But why, why did she conceal it?"
"Because, my lord," replied Langford, "you had left her; you had taken from her the proofs of your marriage with her; you were upon the eve of marriage with another, a proud and princely dame of another land; and because her brother, my uncle, once your friend and companion, though he doubted not the tale that his sister told of her private marriage with yourself, and of your having obtained from her all the proofs of that marriage, upon the most solemn vow never to destroy them; though he doubted it not, I say, no, not a word of the whole tale, yet he insisted upon her concealing her situation and the birth of her child, for the sake of the honour of his family, at least till he could obtain from you the proofs of his sister's virtue. Nay more; when he found that, notwithstanding all his precautions, scandal had got abroad and was busy with her name, he forced her to quit her own land, to dwell in other countries, to assume another name, and to countenance the report of her own death. In every matter of fortune he treated her with noble and princely generosity; and in all points he was kind, except in one, where he was stern and inflexible. But I agitate you. You are not able to hear this tale now."
"Go on! go on!" exclaimed the Earl; "let me hear it all at once. Keep me not a moment in suspense."
"Well," continued Langford, "he educated me as if I had been his own child; but, as I was born in England--born within but a few miles of this spot--he caused me to be placed in the English regiments serving at that time with the troops of France. When of an age to judge for myself, he told me, with her consent, the sad story of my mother, which she had never told me----"
"What! then she lived!" exclaimed the Earl; "she did not die when I was told she died!"
"Oh no, my lord," replied Langford; "she bore deep grief for many a long and bitter year. Hers was a heart of much endurance, and though the disappointment of her first affection, the destruction of all confidence in----"
"Hush! hush!" exclaimed the Earl, covering his eyes with his hands. "Hush, hush; I did her bitter wrong!"
There was a silent pause of several minutes, and then the old man asked again, "How long has she been dead?"
"Scarcely two years, my lord," replied his son; "and let me say, that even to the last, there was within her heart a lingering spark of affection toward him whom she had loved in early youth--whom she had loved alone."
"Bless her!" exclaimed the Earl; "bless her! Oh, could she but know that I weep for her even now!" and he did weep.