“I am very glad to hear it; but I knew that it was in me long before I ever dreamed of knowing you. Are you not anxious to know something about the future Lady Kingsley's past history?”
“It will all come in good time; it is not well to have a surfeit of joy in one night.
“I do not know that this will add to your joy; but it had better be told and be done with, at once and forever. In the first place, I presume I am an orphan, for I have never known father or mother, and I have never had any other name but Leoline.”
“So Ormiston told me.”
“My first recollection is of Prudence; she was my nurse and governess, both in one; and we lived in a cottage by the sea—I don't know where, but a long way from this. When I was about ten years old, we left it, and came to London, and lived in a house in Cheapside, for five or six years; and then we moved here. And all this time, Sir Norman you will think it strange—but I never made any friends or acquaintances, and knew no one but Prudence and an old Italian professor, who came to our lodgings in Cheapside, every week, to give me lessons. It was not because I disliked society, you must know; but Prudence, with all her kindness and goodness—and I believe she truly loves me—has been nothing more or less all my life than my jailer.”
She paused to clasp a belt of silver brocade, fastened by a pearl buckle, close around her little waist, and Sir Norman fixed his eyes upon her beautiful face, with a powerful glance.
“Knew no one—that is strange, Leoline! Not even the Count L'Estrange?”
“Ah! you know him?” she cried eagerly, lifting her eyes with a bright look; “do—do tell me who he is?”
“Upon my honor, my dear,” said Sir Norman, considerably taken aback, “it strikes me you are the person to answer that question. If I don't greatly mistake, somebody told me you were going to marry him.”
“Oh, so I was,” said Leoline, with the utmost simplicity. “But I don't know him, for all that; and more than that, Sir Norman, I do not believe his name is Count L'Estrange, any more than mine is!”