"I had always resolved to tell him all about his people when he was twenty-three. Who would have thought, however, that he would take it as he did?"
"You forget that you have not told me what he did do. If I am to sympathize you must tell me all."
"As far as the world knows, he went away on leave, so to speak. Perhaps it is only on leave, after all. But it is a long leave, and it looks more like desertion."
"You are mysterious, Lord Jocelyn."
"Are you curious, Miss Messenger?"
"Say I am sympathetic. Tell me as much as you can about your ward."
Lord Jocelyn looked in his listener's face. Yes; there was sympathy in it and interest, both, as phrenologists say, largely developed.
"Then I will explain to you, Miss Messenger, how the boy did this most remarkable and unexpected thing." He paused a moment, considering. "Imagine a boy whom I had taken away from his own people at three, or thereabouts, so that he should never know anything of them at all, or dream about them, or yearn, you know, or anything of that kind—an orphan, too, with nothing but an uncle Bunker—it is inconceivable!"
"But we do not get on," said Angela, in great impatience; yet relieved to find from the reference to her worthy friend, Bunker, that there was only one Harry. "What is inconceivable?"
"I am coming to that. I gave the boy the best education I could get for him; he was so eager and apt that he taught himself more than he could be taught; if he saw anybody doing a thing well, he was never satisfied till he could do it as well himself—not better, mark you! a cad might have wanted to do it better; a gentleman is content to do it as well as any—any other gentleman. There is hardly anything he could not do; there was nobody who did not love him; he was a favorite in society; he had hosts of friends; nobody cared who was his father: what did that matter? As I put it to him, I said, 'Look at So-and-So and So-and-So, who are their fathers? Who cares? Who asks?' Yet when he learned the truth, he broke away, gave up all, and went back to his own relations—to Whitechapel!"