nce.

"Hush, Brace!" she whispered, her face assuming an aspect of horror.
"The idea is too dreadful. Think, too, of what it embraces."

"Yes--yes, I know," he exclaimed, impetuously; "but, mother, this must
be cleared up. I will have all brought to light. I should have said
nothing but for your questions, rather choosing to pursue my own
course."

"But think, Brace--think of Isa. Suppose such a revelation as you seek
to make, how then?--consider how it would affect her. My son, had you
not better suffer than bring such a charge against her father?"

"Her father--Sir Murray Gernon? I never suspected him of so foul a
crime. Mother, you have something you keep back from me. You have
suspected him of this, then, perhaps years ago."

Mrs Norton said nothing, but her agitated countenance spoke volumes;
and rising from his seat, Brace exclaimed, bitterly:

"Oh! mother--mother. Is there an evil fate hanging over us? Everything
seems to militate against my prospects of happiness. If I had never
seen her--if I had never seen her!" he groaned.

"Brace, my son, be a man!" exclaimed Mrs Norton, her eyes the while
swimming with tears. "You are young yet, and women's hearts are not so
frail as novelists would paint them. Wait on and hope. Live in the
happy thought that Isa loves you; and, if she be her mother's child, no
threat, no persuasion will tempt her to give her hand without her heart.
You are young, very young yet, and time may prove all--may lay bare the
secrets of the past. I did suspect him. Promise me that you will hold
my words secret as the grave, and that you will make no use of them, for
Isa's sake, and I will tell you."

"Mother," said Brace, bitterly, "I would cut off my right hand sooner
than speak a word that would injure any one belonging to her. Say what
you will, you cannot alter what I see already. It is all plain enough.
My hands are chained, and I must, as you say, live on and hope."

"Yes," he said, after Mrs Norton had told him of Jane's visit, "it is
possible that all may have been her hallucinations; and it is as
possible that--there--no, it is impossible, and I will not harbour the
thought. Mother dear, you must teach me your old resignation, that I
may wait patiently for the good time when all shall be made plain; for I
will wait, you helping, though,"--he said, with a sad and mournful
smile--"that time may not be on this side of the grave!"

Book 2, Chapter XX.

A VISIT