“Don’t you think, sir, that everything will come right one day?”
“God grant it!” responded the captain with a groan, self-reproached for the little faith beside the strong desire.
“Do you think it wrong, sir, to use a name that is not quite my own?” said Clare. “People sometimes seem to think so.”
“Not at all, my boy! You must have a name. You did not steal it. They gave it you.”
The look of the boy when he thus answered him, completely restored sir Harry’s confidence in his mental soundness, while both the mode and the nature of his answer to every question he put to him, bore the strongest impress of truth.
“If the boy be a liar,” he said to himself, “I will never more trust my kind. I will turn to the wild-beasts, and believe in panthers and hyenas!”
“They did, sir,” answered Clare. “Mr. Porson gave me his own name, and he was a clergyman. So I thought afterwards, when I had to think about it, that it couldn’t be wrong to use it.”
But how could sir Harry palter so with himself? He might have got at the necessary facts so much quicker!
Sir Harry shrank from seeing his suddenly wakened hope, dead for many a year, crumble before his eyes. He dared not yet drive question close.
“Did Mr. Porson give you both your names?” he asked.