s. Armadale's marriage. I have heard her son talk of her;
I know how he loves her memory. As God is my witness, he shall never
love it less dearly through _me_!"

Simply as the words were spoken, they touched the deepest sympathies
in the rector's nature: they took his thoughts back to Mrs. Armadale's
deathbed. There sat the man against whom she had ignorantly warned him
in her son's interests; and that man, of his own free-will, had laid on
himself the obligation of respecting her secret for her son's sake! The
memory of his own past efforts to destroy the very friendship out of
which this resolution had sprung rose and reproached Mr. Brock. He held
out his hand to Midwinter for the first time. "In her name, and in her
son's name," he said, warmly, "I thank you."

Without replying, Midwinter spread the confession open before him on the
table.

"I think I have said all that it was my duty to say," he began, "before
we could approach the consideration of this letter. Whatever may have
appeared strange in my conduct toward you and toward Mr. Armadale may
be now trusted to explain itself. You can easily imagine the natural
curiosity and surprise that I must have felt (ignorant as I then was of
the truth) when the sound of Mr. Armadale's name first startled me as
the echo of my own. You will readily understand that I only hesitated
to tell him I was his namesake, because I hesitated to damage my
position--in your estimation, if not in his--by confessing that I had
come among you under an assumed name. And, after all that you have just
heard of my vagabond life and my low associates, you will hardly wonder
at the obstinate silence I maintained about myself, at a time when I did
not feel the sense of responsibility which my father's confession has
laid on me. We can return to these small personal explanations, if you
wish it, at another time; they cannot be suffered to keep us from the
greater interests which we must settle before you leave this place.
We may come now--" His voice faltered, and he suddenly turned his face
toward the window, so as to hide it from the rector's view. "We may come
now," he repeated, his hand trembling visibly as it held the page,
"to the murder on board the timber-ship, and to the warning that has
followed me from my father's grave."

Softly--as if he feared they might reach Allan, sleeping in the
neighboring room--he read the last terrible words which the Scotchman's
pen had written at Wildb