“Pity me, my lord, and lend me this volume.”

“What is it you read?” he asked, as he bowed his cheerful assent.

But Emily hid the book in her handkerchief.  Pendennyss noticing an unwillingness, though an extremely playful one, to let him into the secret, examined the case, and perceiving her motive, smiled, as he took down another volume and said—­

“I am not an Irish, but an English peer, Emily.  You have the wrong volume.”

Emily laughed, with deeper blushes, when she found her wishes detected, while the earl, opening the volume he held—­the first of Debrett’s Peerage—­pointed with his finger to the article concerning his own family, and said to Mrs. Wilson, who had joined them at the instant—­

“To-morrow, dear madam, I shall beg your attention to a melancholy tale, and which may, in some slight degree, extenuate the offence I was guilty of in assuming, or rather in maintaining an accidental disguise.”

As he ended, he went to the others, to draw off their attention, while Emily and her aunt examined the paragraph.  It was as follows: 

“George Denbigh—­Earl of Pendennyss—­and Baron Lumley, of Lumley Castle—–­ Baron Pendennyss—­Beaumaris, and Fitzwalter, born——­, of——­, in the year of——­; a bachelor.”  The list of earls and nobles occupied several pages, but the closing article was as follows: 

“George, the 21st earl, succeeded his mother Marian, late Countess of Pendennyss, in her own right, being born of her marriage with George Denbigh, Esq., a cousin-german to Frederick, the 9th Duke of Derwent.”

“Heir apparent.  The titles being to heirs general, will descend to his lordship’s sister, Lady Marian Denbigh, should the present earl die without lawful issue.”

As much of the explanation of the mystery of our tales, involved in the foregoing paragraphs, we may be allowed to relate in our own language, what Pendennyss made his friends acquainted with at different times, and in a manner suitable to the subject and his situation.

Chapter XLI.

It was at the close of that war which lost this country the wealthiest and most populous of her American colonies, that a fleet of ships were returning from their service amongst the islands of the New World, to seek for their worn out and battered hulks, and equally weakened crews, the repairs and comforts of England and home.

The latter word, to the mariner the most endearing of all sounds, had, as it were, drawn together by instinct a group of sailors on the forecastle of the proudest ship of the squadron, who gazed with varied emotions on the land which gave them birth, but with one common feeling of joy that the day of attaining it was at length arrived.

The water curled from the bows of this castle of the ocean, in increasing waves and growing murmurs, that at times drew the attention of the veteran tar to their quickening progress, and having cheered his heart with the sight, he cast his experienced eye in silence on the swelling sails, to see if nothing more could be done to shorten the distance between him and his country.