"What is it, mother?" he asked. "Why should you hesitate to say to me all that is in your heart?"
"Miss Lamar! I saw her the other day. She is sweet and fair to look upon, and very winsome in her ways, but—"
The sentence was left unfinished, while her eyes sought his with a yearning, wistful look.
"I will be on my guard," he said, huskily. "I know that marriage is not for me—as a physician I am convinced of it as another might not be—unless—oh, there will come to me, at times, a wild hope that there may one day be an end to this suspense—this torturing doubt and fear!"
"Too many years have passed," she answered sadly. "I have no longer any expectation that it will ever be cleared up this side the grave."
"Do not say it," he entreated, "it must be done! I shall never resign hope till—I have attained to some certainty; and yet, and yet—in either case it must be grief of heart to me."
"My poor boy!" she murmured, regarding him with tenderly compassionate gaze; then after a pause, "Kenneth," she remarked, "there is little Clendenin about you except the name; you strongly resemble my mother's family in both disposition and personal appearance."
"And yet," he said, with a melancholy smile, "there is nothing more certain than that I am a Clendenin."
"Well," she said, gazing upon him with loving pride, yet with eyes dim with unshed tears, "it is a family of no mean extraction; and an honest, pious ancestry is something to be thankful for."