"You will tell me, my lord, if I am right."
"I hope to be allowed to do so. Pray, stay at home till I return. And now, ere I go, one question more: You indulge conjectures as to Riccabocca, because he has changed his name—why have you dropped your own?"
"I wished to have no name," said Leonard, coloring, deeply, "but that which I could make myself."
"Proud poet, this I can comprehend. But from what reason did you assume the strange and fantastic name of Oran?"
The flush on Leonard's face became deeper.
"My lord," said he, in a low voice, "it is a childish fancy of mine; it is an anagram."
"Ah!"
"At a time when my cravings after knowledge were likely much to mislead, and perhaps undo me, I chanced on some poems that suddenly affected my whole mind, and led me up into purer air; and I was told that these poems were written in youth, by one who had beauty and genius—one who was in her grave—a relation of my own, and her familiar name was Nora—"
"Ah!" again ejaculated Lord L'Estrange, and his arm pressed heavily upon Leonard's.
"So, somehow or other," continued the young author, falteringly, "I wished that if ever I won to a poet's fame, it might be, to my own heart, at least, associated with this name of Nora—with her whom death had robbed of the fame that she might otherwise have won—with her who—"