The Marquis requested our hero to be seated, and, having himself taken a chair, waited for an explanation of the motives of this visit.
"I have called upon you, my lord," said Richard, "for the purpose of requesting one half-hour's serious conversation on a subject which deeply interests me and an amiable girl whom I only yesterday discovered to be my sister. My name is not unknown to your lordship——"
"I have heard much of your Highness," interrupted the nobleman; "and am well acquainted with those great achievements which have covered you with glory."
"When I said that my name was not unknown to your lordship," continued Richard, bowing coldly in acknowledgment of the compliment thus paid him, "I did not allude to that title by which the forms of ceremony compelled me to announce myself: I intended you to understand that the name of Markham must occupy no agreeable place in your lordship's memory."
"Your Highness oversteps the bounds of courtesy in undertaking to answer for the state of my feelings," exclaimed the Marquis, with evident signs of astonishment: "your Highness insinuates that I have reason for self-reproach; and this between strangers——"
"Pardon me for interrupting your lordship," said our hero, calmly but firmly: "if we were personally strangers to each other until now, the name of my deceased father was not unknown to you; nor am I unacquainted with your conduct towards one who was dear to him. And now, my lord, let us understand each other. I came not hither on an inimical errand—scarcely even to reproach you. You are an old man—and it would be unseemly in me, who am a young man, to assume a tone of intimidation or of menace. But I come to request an explanation of a certain affair which is to some degree enveloped in doubt and mystery—although, alas! I dread the very worst:—I come as one gentleman seeks another, to demand the only atonement that can be made for wrongs inflicted years ago on him who was the author of my being;—and that atonement is a full avowal of the past, so that no uncertainty even as to the worst may dwell in the minds of those who are now interested in the subject to which I allude."
"Your Highness is labouring under some extraordinary error," said the Marquis of Holmesford, warmly. "I declare most solemnly that the name of your father was totally unknown to me: indeed, I never heard of your family until the newspapers first became busy with your own exploits in Italy."
"Is this possible?" cried Richard: then, as a sudden reminiscence struck him, he said in a musing tone, "Yes—it may be so. In her last letter addressed to the Marquis of Holmesford poor Harriet intimated that the name of her husband was unknown to him—and that letter was never sent!"
Although the Prince uttered those words rather in a musing tone to himself than in direct address to the Marquis, the latter caught the name of Harriet, and instantly became deeply agitated.
"Harriet, my lord?—did your Highness mention the name of Harriet?" murmured the nobleman.