“Your lordship’s room,” says the seneschal (obviously an old and confidential family servant), “is your old one—­the Tapestried Chamber.  Her Grace is waiting anxiously for you.”

Then two menials marched, with my Gladstone bag, to the apartment thus indicated.  For me, I felt in a dream, or like a man caught up into the fairyland of the “Arabian Nights.”  “Her Grace” was all very well—­the aristocracy always admired my fictitious creations; but “Your Lordship!” Why your Lordship?  Then the chilling idea occurred to me that I had not been “the gentleman for the Towers;” that I was in the position of the hero of “Happy Thoughts” when he went to the Duke’s by mistake for the humble home of the Plyte Frazers.  But I was young.  “Her Grace” could not eat me, and I determined, as I said before, to see it out.

I dressed very deliberately, and that process over, was led by the worthy seneschal into a singular octagonal boudoir, hung with soft dark blue arras.  The only person in the room was a gaunt, middle-aged lady, in deep mourning.  Though I knew no more of the British aristocracy than Mr. W. D. Howells, of New York, I recognized her for the Duchess by her nose, which resembled those worn by the duchesses of Mr. Du Maurier.  As soon as we were alone, she rose, drew me to her bosom, much to my horror, looked at me long and earnestly, and at last exclaimed, “How changed you are, Percy!” (My name is Thomas—­Thomas Cobson.) Before I could reply, she was pouring out reproaches on me for having concealed my existence, and revealed in my novel what she spoke of as “the secret.”

When she grew, not calm, but fatigued, I ventured to ask why she had conferred on me the honour of her invitation, and how I had been unfortunate enough to allude to affairs of which I had certainly no knowledge.  Her reply was given with stately dignity.  “You need not pretend,” she said, “to have forgotten what I told you in this very room, before you left England for an African tour in the Jingo.  I then revealed to you the secret of my life, the secret of the Duke’s death.  Your horror when you heard how that most unhappy man compelled me to free myself from his tyranny, by a method which his habits rendered only too easy—­in short, by a dose of cheap sherry, was deep and natural.  Oh, Percy, you did not kiss your mother before starting on your ill-omened voyage.  As soon as I heard of the wreck of the Jingo, and that you were the only passenger drowned, I recognized an artifice, un vieux truc, by which you hoped to escape from a mother of whom you were ashamed.  You had only pretended to be the victim of Ocean’s rage!  People who are drowned in novels always do reappear:  and, Percy, your mother is an old novel-reader!  My agents have ever since been on your track, but it was reserved for me to discover the last of the Birkenheads in the anonymous author of the ‘Baronet’s Wife.’  That romance, in which you have had the baseness to use your knowledge of a mother’s guilt as a motif in your twopenny plot, unveiled to me the secret of your hidden existence.  You must stop the story, or alter the following numbers; you must give up your discreditable mode of life.  Heavens, that a Birkenhead should be a literary character!  And you must resume your place in my house and in society.”