"The other branch is represented by Miss Grace, here," said Hanbury, softly laying his hand on the girl's hand as it rested on the old woman's.
"What? What? I don't understand you! We are the Graces of Gracedieu, or rather my husband and son were, and my grand-daughter is. There was no difficulty in finding out us. The difficulty was to find out the descendants of Kate Grace, who married a French nobleman in the middle of the last century."
He rose, and bending over the girl's hand raised it to his lips and kissed it, saying in a low voice, deeply shaken: "I am the only descendant of Kate Grace, who, in the middle of the last century, married Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski, called Stanislaus the Second, King of Poland."
CHAPTER XXVI.
[THE END OF DAY.]
Edith sprang from her chair trembling, abashed, overwhelmed. Mrs. Grace fell back and stared at Hanbury. It was not a moment for coherent thought or reasonable words. Even John Hanbury was as much overcome as though the discovery came upon him then for the first time. He felt more inclined for action than for words, and thought was out of the question. He would have liked to jump upon a horse and ride anywhere for life. He would have liked to plunge into a tumultuous river and battle with the flood. The sight of lives imperilled by fire, and rescue possible through him alone, would have afforded a quieting relief in desperate and daring effort.
In his own room, the night before, when he came upon this astounding news in his father's letter, the discovery brought only dreams and visions, echoing voices of the past, and marvellous views of glories and pageantries, splendours and infamies, a feeble ancestor and a despoiled nation.
Now, here was the first effect of declaring his awful kinship to the outside world. His mother's was he, and what was his glory, or infamy of name, was hers; although she was not of the blood. He knew that whatever he was, she was that also, body and soul. But here were two women, one of whom was allied to his race, though stranger to his blood; and the other of whom was remotely his cousin, whose ancestor had been the sister of a king's wife, and he, the descendant of that king. This young girl was kin, though not kind, they were of the half-blood. Revealing his parentage to these two women, was as though he assumed the shadowy crown of kingship in a council of his kinsfolk, conferring and receiving homage.
A king! Descended from a king!
How had his mind shifted and wavered, uncertain. How had his aspirations now fixed on one peak, now on another, until he felt in doubt as to whether there were any stable principle in his whole nature. How had his spirit now sympathised with the stern splendours of war, and now with the ennobling glories of peace. How had he trembled for the rights of the savage, and weighed the consideration that civilization, not mere man, was the only thing to be counted of value. How had he felt his pulses throb at the thought of the lofty and etherealizing privileges of the upper classes, and sworn that Christ's theory of charity to the poor, and fellowship with the simple and humble, was the only way of tasting heaven, and acting God's will while on earth. Had all these mutations, these dizzying and distracting vacillations, been only the stirring of the kingly principle in his veins?