’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 the table and sunk heavily into it.

“You are tired, poor fellow, and no wonder!  I dare say, for all the good things you got at the ball, that a cup of tea will do you no harm,” said Hannah, pouring out and handing him one.

Ishmael took it wearily and sat it by his side.

“And now tell me about the premiums,” continued his aunt.

“I got the first premium in belles-lettres, aunt; and it was Hallam’s ‘History of Literature.’  And I got the first in languages, which was Irving’s ’Life of Washington’—­two very valuable works, Aunt Hannah, that will be treasures to me all my life.”