as
desired to walk up to her room. A servant preceding him, opened a door,
and said:

"Here is a ge'man to see you, mum."

And Mr. Brudenell entered.

Hannah looked, dropped the needlework she held in her hand, started up,
overturning the chair, and with a stare of consternation exclaimed:

"The Lord deliver us! is it you? And hasn't the devil got you yet,
Herman Brudenell?"

"It is I, Hannah," he answered, dropping without invitation into the
nearest seat.

"And what on earth have you come for, after all these years?" she asked,
continuing to stare at him.

"To see you, Hannah."

"And what in the name of common sense do you want to see me for? I don't
want to see you; that I tell you plainly; for I'd just as lief see Old
Nick!"

"Hannah," said Herman Brudenell, with an unusual assumption of dignity,
"I have come to speak to you about--Are you quite alone?" he suddenly
broke off and inquired, cautiously glancing around the room.

"What's that to you? What can you have to say to me that you could not
shout from the housetop? Yes, I'm alone, if you must know!"

"Then I wish to speak to you about my son."

"Your--what?" demanded Hannah, with a frown as black as midnight.

"My son," repeated Herman Brudenell, with emphasis.

"Your son? What son? I didn't know you had a son! What should I know
about your son?"

"Woman, stop this! I speak of my son, Ishmael Worth--whom I met for the
first time in the courtroom yesterday! And I ask you how it has fared
with him these many years?" demanded Mr. Brudenell sternly, for he was
beginning to lose patience with Hannah.

"Oh--h! So you met Ishmael Worth in the courtroom yesterday, just when
he had proved himself to be the most talented man there, did you? That
accounts for it all. I understand it now! You could leave him in his
helpless, impoverished, orphaned infancy to perish! You could utterly
neglect him, letting him suffer with cold and hunger and sickness for
years and years and years! And now that, by the blessing of Almighty
God, he has worked himself up out of that horrible pit into the open air
of the world; and now that from being a poor, despised outcast babe he
has risen to be a man of note among men; now, forsooth, you want to
claim him as your son! Herman Brudenell, I always hated you, but now I
scorn you! Twenty odd years ago I would have killed you, only I didn't
want to kill your soul as well as your body, nor likewise to be hanged
for you! And n