"Pardon this intrusion," said the Major, his eyes fixed intently on the startled girl; "have I the pleasure of addressing Miss Hermia Rivers?"
"That is my name, sir."
"Mine is on the card you are now holding. But from this hour I hope you will know me by another and a very different name. My dear young lady, in me you see your grandfather; in you I behold the daughter of my only son!"
[CHAPTER XL.]
A STORY OF THE PAST AND DEPARTURE.
Had a bomb burst in the room it might have caused more alarm, but it could scarcely have been the cause of more astonishment than was the Major's sudden announcement.
It was half-an-hour later. The first access of wonder had in some measure subsided. There had been question and answer on both sides. The Major told how, in the first place, he had been struck by Hermia's extraordinary likeness to the miniature in his possession, and, in the second, by her surname (his son's full name had been Warren Rivers Strickland); and how, when he found that only that very day she had been to Broome to seek an interview with Miss Pengarvon, he had at once come to the conclusion that it was not possible that she could be anyone other than the granddaughter he had sought for so long a time, but had hitherto sought in vain.
Then came the Major's turn to be told the story of Hermia's adoption by John Brancker and his sister, followed by an account of Mr. Hodgson's visits to Ashdown, which naturally led up to the particulars of Clement's quest and what had resulted therefrom, the whole ending with an account of what had passed at the interview between Miss Pengarvon and Hermia only a few hours before.
But something more remained to be told, to wit, the story of the ill-fated young couple, Warren Strickland and Isabel Pengarvon. This the Major now proceeded to narrate as far as the facts connected therewith were known to him. The following summary of what he had to tell is all that need be given here:
At the time young Warren Strickland went down to Stavering for the purpose of trout-fishing, he had just passed his final army examination and was awaiting his commission and appointment. While at Stavering he met Isabel Pengarvon, fell in love with her, and persuaded her to agree to a secret marriage. He was very poor, Isabel had not a farthing of her own, and on both sides the marriage was an act of the maddest imprudence. Young Strickland kept the affair a profound secret from all his friends and connections, and when he received his commission and was ordered to Aldershot, he established Isabel in lodgings in London, and ran up to see her there as often as he could get away. In those lodgings Hermia was born.