ght of such an astonishing old figure might well produce
in the young man, there was good will too, and the kindness of
consanguinity. She had been his father's wife, and was his grandfather's
daughter. She had suffered him in old days, and was kind to him now
after her fashion. And now that bar-sinister was removed from Esmond's
thought, and that secret opprobrium no longer cast upon his mind, he was
pleased to feel family ties and own them--perhaps secretly vain of the
sacrifice he had made, and to think that he, Esmond, was really the
chief of his house, and only prevented by his own magnanimity from
advancing his claim.

At least, ever since he had learned that secret from his poor patron
on his dying bed, actually as he was standing beside it, he had felt an
independency which he had never known before, and which since did not
desert him. So he called his old aunt Marchioness, but with an air as if
he was the Marquis of Esmond who so addressed her.

Did she read in the young gentleman's eyes, which had now no fear of
hers or their superannuated authority, that he knew or suspected the
truth about his birth? She gave a start of surprise at his altered
manner: indeed, it was quite a different bearing to that of the
Cambridge student who had paid her a visit two years since, and whom
she had dismissed with five pieces sent by the groom of the chamber. She
eyed him, then trembled a little more than was her wont, perhaps, and
said, "Welcome, cousin," in a frightened voice.

His resolution, as has been said before, had been quite different,
namely, so to bear himself through life as if the secret of his birth
was not known to him; but he suddenly and rightly determined on a
different course. He asked that her ladyship's attendants should be
dismissed, and when they were private--"Welcome, nephew, at least,
madam, it should be," he said. "A great wrong has been done to me and to
you, and to my poor mother, who is no more."

"I declare before heaven that I was guiltless of it," she cried out,
giving up her cause at once. "It was your wicked father who--"

"Who brought this dishonor on our family," says Mr. Esmond. "I know it
full well. I want to disturb no one. Those who are in present possession
have been my dearest benefactors, and are quite innocent of intentional
wrong to me. The late lord, my dear patron, knew not the truth until a
few months before his death, when Father Holt brought the news to him."

"The wre