Maitland Tait nodded reassuringly.
"My father died two weeks ago," he said. "And I had to come into the title."
"And this place is yours!" I sang out, feeling that all the years of my life I had been destiny's love-child. "This old abbey is yours! The park is yours! The garden is yours! The sun-dial is yours!"
"And the girl is mine!" he said, with a grave smile. "I am careless of all the other."
His gravity sobered my wild spirits.
"And your father was—Lord Erskine?" I finally asked.
"He was—Lord Erskine," he answered. "He married out of his station—far, far above his station, I think——"
His big beautiful mouth set grimly, but he said nothing more, and I knew that this was as heavily as he would ever tread upon the ashes of the dead. Gradually, bit by bit, I learned the history of the muddy pool of mistake and fault, out of which the tender blossom of his boyhood had been dragged. His father had never seen him, but a certain stiff-necked family pride had caused him to provide material bounty for his child. The combination of a good education and rugged plebeian industry had made him what he was.
"But why didn't you tell me—that day when you first came to see me and we talked about this place—why didn't you tell me that it was your ancestral home?"
He looked at me in surprise.