"In the name of heaven, young man, in pity tell me who you are!" gasped Mordaunt, almost inarticulately, as he grasped Edward's hand and gazed intently on his face; for every word he spoke, heightened by the kindling animation of his features, appeared to render that extraordinary likeness yet more perfect.
"Edward Fortescue is my name."
"But your mother's, boy,—your mother's? I ask not from idle curiosity."
"She was the youngest daughter of Lord Delmont, Eleanor Manvers."
Mordaunt gazed yet more intently on the youth, then hoarsely murmuring, "I knew it,—it was no fancy," sunk back almost overpowered with momentary agitation. Recovering himself almost instantly, and before Edward could give vent to his surprise and sympathy in words, he asked, "Is Lord Delmont yet alive? I knew him once; he was a kind old man." His lip quivered, so as almost to prevent the articulation of his words.
"Oh, no; the departure of my mother for India was a trial he never recovered, and the intelligence that his only son, a noble and gallant officer, perished with the crew of the Leander, finally broke his heart; he never held up his head again, and died a very few months afterwards."
Mordaunt buried his face in his hands, and for several minutes remained silent, as if struggling with some powerful emotion, then asked, "You spoke only of your aunt and sister. Does not your mother live?"
"She died when I was little more than eleven years old, and my sister scarcely ten. My father, Colonel Fortescue, dying in India, she could not bear to remain there, but we were compelled to take refuge off the coast of Wales from the storms which had arisen, and then she had only time to give us to the care of her sister, for whom she had sent, and died in her arms."
"And is it her sister, or your father's, of whom you spoke just now?"
"Hers—Mrs. Hamilton."