'Tis white as a shroud;
Like a pall hangs above it
The low, drooping cloud.

'Tis well that the white ones
Who bore her to bliss,
Shut out from her new life
The sorrows of this.

Else sure as he stands here,
And speaks of his love,
She would leave for his darkness
Her glory above.

--_E.H. Whittier_.

Giddy, faint, reeling from the shock he had received, Ishmael tottered
from the gay and lighted rooms and sought the darkness and the coolness
of the night without.

He leaned against the great elm tree on the lawn, and wiped the beaded
sweat from his brow.

"It is not true," he said. "I know it is not true! Walter said it was
false; and I would stake my soul that it is. My dear mother is an angel
in heaven; I am certain of that; for I have seen her in my dreams ever
since I can remember. But yet--but yet--why did they all recoil from me?
Even she--even Claudia Merlin shrank from me as from something unclean
and contaminating, when Alfred called me that name. If they had not
thought there was some truth in the charge, would they all have recoiled
from me so? Would she have shrunk from me as if I had had the plague?
Oh, no! Oh, no! And then Aunt Hannah! Why does she act so very strangely
when I ask her about my parents? If I ask her about my father she
answers me with a blow. If I ask her about my mother, she answers that
my mother was a saint on earth and is now an angel in heaven. Oh! I do
not need to be told that; I know it already. I always knew it of my dear
mother. But to only know it no longer satisfies me; I must have the
means of proving it. And to-night, yes, to-night, Aunt Hannah, before
either of us sleep, you shall tell me all that you know of my angel
mother and my unknown father."

And having recovered his severely shaken strength, Ishmael left the
grounds of Brudenell Hall and struck into the narrow foot-path leading
down the heights and through the valley to the Hut hill.

Hannah was seated alone, enjoying her solitary cup of tea, when Ishmael
opened the door and entered.

"What, my lad, have you come back so early? I did not think the ball
would have been over before twelve or one o'clock, and it is not ten
yet; but I suppose, being a school ball, it broke up early. Did you get
any premiums? How many did you get?" inquired Hannah, heaping question
upon question without waiting for reply, as was her frequent custom.

Ishmael drew a chair to the other side of