so--from Mr.
Prendergast, I think it was, and Mr. Prendergast said a great deal
more than you did."

"Well?"

"We thought she was going to be ill at first, for she became so very
pale,--flushing up sometimes for half a minute or so; but after an
hour or two she became quite calm. She has seen nobody since but us
and Aunt Letty."

"She saw me," said Clara.

"Oh, yes, you; you are one of us now,--just the same as ourselves,
isn't she, Herbert?"

Not exactly the same, Herbert thought. And then he went up stairs to
his mother.

This interview I will not attempt to describe. Lady Fitzgerald had
become a stricken woman from the first moment that she had heard that
that man had returned to life, who in her early girlhood had come to
her as a suitor. Nay, this had been so from the first moment that she
had expected his return. And these misfortunes had come upon her so
quickly that, though they had not shattered her in body and mind as
they had shattered her husband, nevertheless they had told terribly
on her heart. The coming of those men, the agony of Sir Thomas, the
telling of the story as it had been told to her by Mr. Prendergast,
the resolve to abandon everything--even a name by which she might
be called, as far as she herself was concerned, the death of her
husband, and then the departure of her ruined son, had, one may say,
been enough to destroy the spirit of any woman. Her spirit they had
not utterly destroyed. Her powers of endurance were great,--and she
had endured, still hoping. But as the uttermost malice of adversity
had not been able altogether to depress her, so neither did returning
prosperity exalt her,--as far as she herself was concerned. She
rejoiced for her children greatly, thanking God that she had not
entailed on them an existence without a name. But for herself, as
she now told Herbert, outside life was all over. Her children and
the poor she might still have with her, but beyond, nothing in this
world;--to them would be confined all her wishes on this side the
grave.

But nevertheless she could be warm in her greetings to her son. She
could understand that though she were dead to the world he need not
be so,--nor indeed ought to be so. Things that were now all ending
with her were but beginning with him. She had no feeling that taught
her to think that it was bad for him to be a man of rank and fortune,
the head of his family, and the privileged one of his race. It had
been perhaps her gr