“Helen Thornton your mother? I remember her well, and her marriage with Mr. Hawley. You do not resemble her one-half so much as you do my sister Mildred, for I am that old man’s son. I am Richard Howell.”
“Every one who ever saw your sister speaks of the resemblance,” returned Mildred. “Indeed, my old nurse says my mother was very anxious that I should look like her, and even used to pray that I might. This may, perhaps, account for it.”
“It may,—it may,” Richard answered abstractively, pacing up and down the room; then suddenly turning to Mildred he asked: “When were you in Mayfield, and how is my father now? Does he look very old?”
Mildred did not tell him when she was in Mayfield, but merely replied that “his father was well, and that for a man nearly sixty-five he was looking remarkably young.”
“And the negroes?” said Richard; “though, of course, you know nothing of them, nor of those people who used to live in that gable-roofed house down the hill. Thompson was the name.”
Here was a chance for explanation, but Mildred cast it from her by simply answering:
“Old Mrs. Thompson lives there yet with her club-footed grandson, Oliver Hawkins, whose mother was probably living when you went away.”
Spite of her resolution, Mildred hoped he would ask for the baby next, but he did not. He merely walked faster and faster across the floor, while she sighed mentally: “He has forgotten me, and I will not thrust myself upon his remembrance.”
At last the rapid walking ceased, and coming up before her, Mr. Howell said:
“It seems strange to you, no doubt, that I have purposely absented myself from home so long, and in looking back upon the past, it seems strange to me. I was very unhappy when I went away, and at the last I quarrelled with my father, who, for a farewell, gave to me his curse, bidding me never come into his presence again. If you know him at all, you know he has a fiery temper. To a certain extent I inherit the same, and with my passions roused I said it would be many years before he saw my face again. Still, I should have returned had not circumstances occurred which rendered it unnecessary. I wrote to my father twice, but he never answered me, and I said ‘I will write no more.’ For three years I remained among the South Sea Islands, and then found my way to India, where, in the excitement of amassing wealth, I gradually ceased to care for anything in America. At last I made the acquaintance of a fair young English girl, and making her my wife, removed with her to England, where, little more than a year since, she died, leaving me nothing to love but Edith. Then my thoughts turned homeward, for I promised Lucy, when dying, that I would seek a reconciliation with my father. So I crossed the ocean again, coming first to Dresden, for this wild, out-of-the-way place is connected with some of the sweetest and saddest memories of my life. In a few days, however, I go to Beechwood, but I shall not apprise my father of my return, for I wish to test the instincts of the parental heart, and see if he will know me.