ent, a deep affection, a powerful--overpowering--ardent love,
which nothing can ever extinguish. Need I tell you that the last few
days would have increased that love had increase been possible.

"All this, however, I know is no justification of my venturing to raise
my thoughts to you--still less of my venturing to express these feelings
boldly; but it has been an excuse to myself, and in some degree to
others, for abstaining hitherto from that which my best interests, a
mother's fame, and my own rights, required. The time has now come when I
can no longer remain silent; when I must throw upon you the
responsibility of an important choice; when I am forced to tell you how
deeply, how devotedly, I love you, in order that you may say whether you
will take the only means of saving me from the most painful task I ever
undertook, by conferring on me the greatest blessing that woman ever
gave to man; or, on the other hand, will drive me to a task repugnant to
all my feelings, but just, necessary, inevitable, in case of your
refusal. Let me explain, however, that I am your cousin--the son of your
father's elder brother by a private marriage with a peasant girl of this
county. The whole case is perfectly clear, and I have proof positive of
the marriage in my hands. From fear of a lawsuit, and from the pressure
of great poverty, my mother was induced to sacrifice her rights after
her husband's early death, still to conceal her marriage, to bear even
sneers and shame, and to live upon a pittance allowed to her by her
husband's father, and secured to her by him after his own death, when
she was entitled to honor, and birth, and distinction by the law of the
land.

"One of her objects, doubtless, was to secure to herself and her son a
moderate competence, as the late Sir John Hastings, my grandfather and
yours, had the power of leaving all his estates to any one he pleased,
the entail having ended with himself. For this she sacrificed her
rights, her name, her fame, and you will find, if you look into your
grandfather's will, that he took especial care that no infraction of the
contract between him and her father should give cause for the assertion
of her rights. Two or three mysterious clauses in that will will show
you at once, if you read them, that the whole tale I tell you is
correct, and that Sir John Hastings, on the one hand, paid largely, and
on the other threatened sternly, in order to conceal the marriage of his
eldest