I merely bowed.

“There is one thing,” she went on, “that I have liked in you from the beginning.  I am to you a total stranger, and my presence in this house is a fact that must awaken many questions in your mind.  Yet you have shown no restless curiosity, have plied me with no leading questions, have left me free to speak, or keep silence.  There is a manly courtesy about this that accords with my feelings.”

I bowed again, but did not venture upon mere words of compliment.

“I am not sure,” said she, “that my name even is known to you.”

“It is not,” I answered.  “You have seemed to avoid any allusion thereto, and delicacy forbade my asking.”

“There has been no purposed concealment.  My name is Montgomery; and I am sister to the late Captain Allen.”

“I had already inferred this relationship.”  The remark evidently surprised her.

“On what ground could you base such an inference?” she asked, curiously.

“On traditional ground.  The history of this old mansion is familiar to most persons in S——­; and some of the incidents connected with the family have too strong a tinge of romance about them to easily pass into oblivion.  It is well known to us that Captain Allen had an only sister.”

“What is it said became of her?”

“When she was about two years of age her mother carried her off, sailing, as was believed, to England, of which country she was a native.”

“Is the name of the child preserved in this tradition?”

“Yes.  It was Flora.”

“My own name,” she said.

“And in person you are identical.”

“Yes.  My mother’s early life embraced some dreadful experiences.  Her father and mother, with two brothers and a younger sister, were all murdered by pirates.  She alone was spared, and afterwards became the wife of a sea captain, who, I fear, was not a man innocent of blood.  On this point, however, my mother was reserved, almost silent.  In the course of time she grew so wretched, as the wife of this man, that she sent a letter to England, addressed to some remembered relative, imploring him to save her from a life that was worse than death.  This letter fell into the right hands.  A cousin was sent out from England, and she fled with him.  No attempt, as far as we know, was ever made to follow and regain her She did not live many years afterwards.  I grew up among my relatives, ignorant of her history.  My memory of her is distinct, though she died when I was but eight years old.

“I married, at the age of twenty-six, an officer in the British army, one of the younger sons in a titled family, for whom no way in the world is opened, except through the church or the battle-field.  General Montgomery chose the profession of a soldier, not from a love of its exciting and fearful concomitants, but because he had no fancy for the gown and cassock, and could not be a hypocrite in religion.  He