-this shameful story of wrong-doing and misery!"

"I don't comprehend--I can't comprehend this impossible tale, Sir
Rupert."

"That is a misnomer now, Colonel Jocyln. I am no longer _Sir_ Rupert."

"Do you mean to say you credit this wild story of a former marriage of
Sir Noel's? Do you really believe your late governess to have been your
father's wife?"

"I believe it, colonel. I have facts and statements, and dying words to
prove it. On my father's death-bed, he made my mother swear to tell the
truth, to repair the wrong he had done; to seek out his son, concealed
by his valet, Vyking, and restore him to his rights! My mother never
kept that promise--the cruel wrong done to herself was too bitter; and
at my birth she resolved never to keep it. I should not atone for the
sin of my father; his elder son should never deprive _her_ child of his
birthright. My poor mother! You know the cause of that mysterious
trouble which fell upon her at my father's death, and which darkened her
life to the last. Shame, remorse, anger--shame for herself--a wife only
in name; remorse for her broken vow to the dead, and anger against that
erring dead man."

"But you told me she had hunted him up and provided for him," said the
mystified colonel.

"Yes; she saw an advertisement in a London paper, calling upon Vyking to
take charge of the boy he had left twelve years before. Now Vyking, the
valet, had been transported for house-breaking long before that, and my
mother answered the advertisement. There could be no doubt the child was
the child Vyking had taken charge of--Sir Noel Thetford's rightful heir.
My mother left him with the painter, Legard, with whom he grew up, whose
name he took; and he is now at Thetford Towers."

"I thought the likeness meant something," muttered the colonel under his
mustache, "his paternity is plainly enough written in his face. And so,"
raising his voice, "Mrs. Weymore recognized her son. Really, your story
runs like a melodrama, where the hero turns out to be a duke, and his
mother knows the strawberry mark on his arm. Well, sir, if Mrs. Weymore
is Sir Noel's rightful widow, and Guy Legard his rightful son and
heir--pray what are you?"

The colorless face of the young man turned dark red for an instant, then
whiter than before.

"My mother was as truly and really Sir Noel's wife as woman can be the
wife of man in the sight of Heaven. The crime was his; the shame and
suffering hers; the atonement m