He made her such a profound bow as her dignity and relationship merited, and advanced with the greatest gravity, and once more kissed that hand, upon the trembling knuckles of which glittered a score of rings—­remembering old times when that trembling hand made him tremble.  “Marchioness,” says he, bowing, and on one knee, “is it only the hand I may have the honor of saluting?” For, accompanying that inward laughter, which the sight of such an astonishing old figure might well produce in the young man, there was good will too, and the kindness of consanguinity.  She had been his father’s wife, and was his grandfather’s daughter.  She had suffered him in old days, and was kind to him now after her fashion.  And now that bar-sinister was removed from Esmond’s thought, and that secret opprobrium no longer cast upon his mind, he was pleased to feel family ties and own them—­perhaps secretly vain of the sacrifice he had made, and to think that he, Esmond, was really the chief of his house, and only prevented by his own magnanimity from advancing his claim.

At least, ever since he had learned that secret from his poor patron on his dying bed, actually as he was standing beside it, he had felt an independency which he had never known before, and which since did not desert him.  So he called his old aunt Marchioness, but with an air as if he was the Marquis of Esmond who so addressed her.

Did she read in the young gentleman’s eyes, which had now no fear of hers or their superannuated authority, that he knew or suspected the truth about his birth?  She gave a start of surprise at his altered manner:  indeed, it was quite a different bearing to that of the Cambridge student who had paid her a visit two years since, and whom she had dismissed with five pieces sent by the groom of the chamber.  She eyed him, then trembled a little more than was her wont, perhaps, and said, “Welcome, cousin,” in a frightened voice.

His resolution, as has been said before, had been quite different, namely, so to bear himself through life as if the secret of his birth was not known to him; but he suddenly and rightly determined on a different course.  He asked that her ladyship’s attendants should be dismissed, and when they were private—­“Welcome, nephew, at least, madam, it should be,” he said.  “A great wrong has been done to me and to you, and to my poor mother, who is no more.”

“I declare before heaven that I was guiltless of it,” she cried out, giving up her cause at once.  “It was your wicked father who—­”

“Who brought this dishonor on our family,” says Mr. Esmond.  “I know it full well.  I want to disturb no one.  Those who are in present possession have been my dearest benefactors, and are quite innocent of intentional wrong to me.  The late lord, my dear patron, knew not the truth until a few months before his death, when Father Holt brought the news to him.”

“The wretch! he had it in confession! he had it in confession!” cried out the Dowager Lady.