"I know it, too; but he drove my mother out of his house for marrying my father—an honorable soldier, an honest gentleman, and a better man than Lord Bellingham."
"I believe you."
"And as he treated my mother so ill and insulted my father, I have no desire for the world to know that I am his grandson."
"But he did the same by my father and mother. My father was his only son, and he went to America, and that is how I came to be an American."
"I did not know that. My mother told me she had an only brother; that he had left England, and had given up all communication with his family. It is true that when I heard your name—Baskerville—I remembered that it had been my mother's name; but as you never spoke of any English relatives, I was no prophet to discover that we were first cousins. Why," continued Langton, saying what everybody else did, "you are the heir!"
"No, I am not. You are much more likely to be master of Bellingham than I. Do you suppose Lord Bellingham would ever make an American his heir? Oh, you don't know him. But you ought to know our uncle, Colonel Baskerville—glorious old chap. Did you never hear of him?"
"Yes, but he was in India; and you forget that I left home when I was eleven years old, and I did not much care for family histories then. Why, however, did you never mention to me that Lord Bellingham was your grandfather?"
"Because my commodore, the great Paul Jones, advised me that the less I said about it the better as long as I was in the American Navy; and he warned me if I were captured at any time that it might go the harder with me if it was known that I was of an English family. The day I left the Seahorse, when I went into the cabin to say good-bye to Captain Lockyer, and get his letter to Admiral Kempenfelt, he had an open 'Peerage and Baronetage' before him. He asked me one or two questions about my father's and mother's names, and then quietly wrote, before my face, that I was Lord Bellingham's grandson. Foolishly enough, I thought when I got to England that my grandfather might help me to get exchanged. But Commodore Jones was right—it went the harder with me on that account, and I don't propose to trust myself shortly within reach of the Admiralty. I shall take my chances at Gibraltar."
"You always were, and always will be, a fellow for adventure. Now, tell me all that has befallen you—and, by George! how comical you look without any hair!"