“You must have heard about it in March, then?”
“Yes, at the end of January. His ruin took place in December, 1845. It was the middle of May before I got home. I then, toward the end of the month, sent my clerk to Brandon village to make inquiries. He brought word of the death of Brandon, and the departure of his family to parts unknown.”
{Illustration: “THEN, COVERING HER FACE WITH HER HANDS, SHE BURST INTO AN AGONY OF TEARS."}
“Did he make no particular inquiries?”
“No.”
“And you said not a word to me!”
“I was afraid of agitating you, my dear.”
“And therefore you have secured for me unending self-reproach.”
“Why so? Surely you are blaming yourself without a shadow of a cause.”
“I will tell you why. I dare say I feel unnecessarily on the subject, but I can not help it. It is a fact that Brandon was always impulsive and culpably careless about himself. It is to this quality, strangely enough, that I owe my father’s life, and my own comfort for many years. Paolo also owes as much as I. Mr. Brandon, with a friend of his, was sailing through the Mediterranean in his own yacht, making occasional tours into the country at every place where they happened to land, and at last they came to Girgenti, with the intention of examining the ruins of Agrigentum. This was in 1818, four years before I was born. My father was stopping at Girgenti, with his wife and Paolo, who was then six years old. My father had been very active under the reign of Murat, and had held a high post in his government. This made him suspected after Murat’s overthrow.