Smiling sympathetically at the lovely, startled face, Mr. Kelso continued:
"Lord Ivon was both stern and proud. He vowed he would never forgive his disobedient, runaway son. When letters came from him they were laid aside unread, and poor John's fate remained a mystery to his kindred. His mother pined, but her stern husband forbid her ever to think of the truant again."
"He was cruel!" Flower murmured, indignantly.
"Yes, he was very hard; but Heaven punished him!" said William Kelso. "The heir died in a few years, and the second son came home from the army to take his place. He married late in life, and his beautiful, delicate wife bore him two sons, and then died. Her husband was drowned a year later on Lake Como. His two boys inherited their mother's consumptive tendency, and one died in early boyhood, and the other just before he attained his majority. Lord Ivon's house was left unto him desolate."
Flower sighed, and he continued:
"There was no one to inherit the title and estates unless John Forrest had survived his brothers, or had married and left descendants. So the letters that had been flung aside at last were opened eagerly to discover John Forrest's whereabouts. There were scores of them, for he had never ceased to implore his parents for their forgiveness. He wrote that he was here in the South, that he had married a lovely girl, then that he had a lovely child called Daisy."
"My mother!" Flower exclaimed, sadly.
"Yes, your mother!" said Mr. Kelso.
He paused a moment, watching the long shadows of sunset as they began to creep across the grave-stones in the old cemetery; then he resumed:
"After the letter that told of Daisy Forrest's birth, no more came to Lord Ivon, and he supposed that his son had grown tired of writing, and had reconciled himself to the alienation. Alas! poor John was dead."