everal minutes remained
silent, as if struggling with some powerful emotion, then asked, "You
spoke only of your aunt and sister. Does not your mother live?"

"She died when I was little more than eleven years old, and my sister
scarcely ten. My father, Colonel Fortescue, dying in India, she could
not bear to remain there, but we were compelled to take refuge off the
coast of Wales from the storms which had arisen, and then she had only
time to give us to the care of her sister, for whom she had sent, and
died in her arms."

"And is it her sister, or your father's, of whom you spoke just now?"

"Hers--Mrs. Hamilton."

"Hamilton, and she lives still! you said you knew her," repeated
Mordaunt, suddenly springing up and speaking in a tone of animation,
that bewildered Edward almost as much as his former agitation. "Speak of
her, young man; tell me something of her. Oh, it is long since I have
heard her name."

"Did you know my aunt? I have never heard her mention your name,
Lieutenant Mordaunt."

"Very likely not," he replied, and a faint smile played round his lip,
creating an expression which made young Fortescue start, for the
features seemed familiar to him. "It was only in my boyhood that I knew
her, and she was kind to me. We do not easily forget the associations of
our boyhood, my young friend, particularly when manhood has been a
dreary blank, or tinged with pain. In my hours of slavery, the smile and
look of Emmeline Manvers has often haunted my waking and my sleeping
dreams; but she is married--is in all probability a happy wife and
loving mother; prosperity is around her, and it is most likely she has
forgotten the boy to whom her kindness was so dear."

"Hours of slavery?" asked Edward, for those words had alone riveted his
attention. "Can you, a free and British sailor, have ever been a slave?"

"Even so, my young friend; for seven years I languished in the
loathsome dungeons of Algiers, and the last sixteen years have been a
slave."

Edward grasped his hand with an uncontrollable impulse, while at the
same moment he clenched his sword, and his countenance expressed the
powerful indignation of his young and gallant spirit, though words for
the moment he had none. Lieutenant Mordaunt again smiled--that smile
which by some indefinable power inspired Edward with affection and
esteem.

"I am free now, my gallant boy," he said; "free as if the galling
fetters of slavery had never bowed down my neck. An