[Pg 18]

"Why do you ask?" she went on, curiously. "Do you find his name among the old documents?"

Vesper understood her better than to make too great a mystery of a thing that he wished to conceal. "Yes, there is a letter from him."

"I should like to read it," she said, fussily fumbling at her waist for her spectacle-case.

Vesper indifferently turned his head towards her. "It is very long."

Her enthusiasm died away, and she sank back in her rocking-chair.

"My great-grandfather shot himself, and my grandfather was lost at sea," pursued the young man, dreamily.

"Yes," she said, reluctantly; then she added, "my people all die in bed."

"His ship caught on fire."

She shuddered. "Yes; no one escaped."

"All burnt up, probably; and if they took to their boats they must have died of starvation, for they were never heard of."

They were both silent, and the same thought was in their minds. Was this very cool and calm young man, sitting staring into the fire, to end his days in the violent manner peculiar to the rugged members of his father's family, or was he to die according to the sober and methodical rule of the peaceful members of his mother's house?

[Pg 19]

[Pg 19]

Out of the depths of a quick maternal agony she exclaimed, "You are more like me than your father."

Her son gave her an assenting and affectionate glance, though he knew that she knew he was not at all like her. He even began to fancy, in a curious introspective fashion, whether he should have cared at all for this little white-haired lady if he had happened to have had another woman for a mother. The thought amused him, then he felt rebuked, and, leaning over, he took one of the white hands on her lap and kissed it gently.

"We should really investigate our family histories in this country more than we do," he said. "I wish 

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