“If I speak with you calmly, Ralph, it is because you are the indweller of my house, and because I have a pledge to my brother in your behalf.”

“Speak freely, sir; let not this scruple trouble you any longer.  It shall not trouble me; and I shall be careful to take early occasion to release you most effectually from all such pledges.”

Colonel Colleton proceeded as if the last speech had not been uttered.

“Edith has a claim in society which shall not be sacrificed.  Her father, Ralph, did not descend to the hovel of the miserable peasant, choosing a wife from the inferior grade, who, without education, and ignorant of all refinement, could only appear a blot upon the station to which she had been raised.  Her mother, sir, was not a woman obscure and uneducated, for whom no parents could be found.”

“What means all this, sir?  Speak, relieve me at once, Colonel Colleton.  What know you of my mother?”

“Nothing—­but quite as much as your father ever knew.  It is sufficient that he found her in a hovel, without a name, and with the silly romance of his character through life, he raised her to a position in society which she could not fill to his honor, and which, finally, working upon his pride and sensibility drove him into those extravagances which in the end produced his ruin.  I grant that she loved him with a most perfect devotion, which he too warmly returned, but what of that?—­she was still his destroyer.”

Thus sternly did the colonel unveil to the eyes of Ralph Colleton a portion of the family picture which he had never been permitted to survey before.

Cold drops stood on the brow of the now nerveless and unhappy youth.  He was pale, and his eyes were fixed for an instant; but, suddenly recovering himself, he rushed hastily from the apartment before his uncle could interpose to prevent him.  He heard not or heeded not the words of entreaty which called him back; but, proceeding at once to his chamber, he carefully fastened the entrance, and, throwing himself upon his couch, found relief from the deep mental agony thus suddenly forced upon him, in a flood of tears.

For the first time in his life, deriving his feeling in this particular rather from the opinions of society than from any individual consciousness of debasement, he felt a sentiment of humiliation working in his breast.  His mother he had little known, but his father’s precepts and familiar conversation had impressed upon him, from his childhood, a feeling for her of the deepest and most unqualified regard.  This feeling was not lessened, though rebuked, by the development so unnecessarily and so wantonly conveyed.  It taught a new feeling of distrust for his uncle, whose harsh manner and ungenerous insinuations in the progress of the preceding half-hour, had lost him not a little of the youth’s esteem.  He felt that the motive of his informer was not less unkind than was the information painful and oppressive; and his mind, now more than ever excited and active from this thought, went on discussing, from point to point, all existing relations, until a stern resolve to leave, that very night, the dwelling of one whose hospitality had been made a matter of special reference, was the only and settled conclusion to which his pride could possibly come.