“No,” said Lance, “my dear fellow!  You have stood it wisely and bravely so far, go on to do so.  I don’t feel the least certain that this is not mere bullying.  She did not tell you any particulars?”

“No, certainly not.”

“Not the name of this supposed predecessor of Edgar’s?  Where she may have been married, or how?  How she parted from him, or how she knows he was alive?  It sounds to me a bogus notion, got up to put the screw on you, by surprise.  I’ll tell you what I’ll do.  I’ll go down to the shop tomorrow morning, see the woman, and extract the truth if possible, and I fully expect that the story will shrink up to nothing.”

“’Tis not the estate I care for,” said Gerald, looking somewhat cheered.  “It is my father’s honour and name.  If that can be cleared—-”

“Do not I care?” said Lance.  “My dear brother Edgar, my model of all that was noble and brilliant-—whom Felix loved above all!  Nay, and you, Gerald, our hope!  I would give anything and everything to free you from this stain, though I trust it will prove only mud that will not stick.  Anyway you have shown your true, faithful Underwood blood.  Now go to bed and sleep if you can.  Don’t say a word, nor look more like a ghost than you can help—-or we shall have to rouge ourselves for our parts.  My boy, my boy!  You are Edgar’s boy, anyway.”

And Lancelot kissed the young pale cheek as he had done when the little wounded orphan clung to him fourteen years ago, or as he kissed his own Felix.

Whatever the night was to Gerald, long was the night, and long the light hours of the morning to the ever sleepless Lance before he could rise and make his way to the shop with any hope of gaining admission, and many were the sighs and prayers that this tale might be confuted, and that the matter might be to the blessing of the youth to whom he felt more warmly now than since those winning baby days had given place to more ordinary boyhood.  He had a long time to pace up and down watching the sparkling water, and feeling the fresh wind on the brow, which was as capable as ever of aching over trouble and perplexity, and dreading above all the effect on the sister, whose consolation and darling Gerald had always been.  How little he had thought, when he had stood staunch against his brother Edgar’s persuasions, that Zoraya was to be the bane of that life which had begun so gaily!

When at last the door was unfastened, and, as before, by Ludmilla, he greeted her kindly, and as she evidently expected some fresh idea about the masque, he gave her his card, and asked her to beg her mother to come and speak to him.  She started at the name and said—-

“Oh, sir, you will do nothing to hurt him-—Mr. Underwood?”

“It is the last thing I wish,” he said earnestly, and Ludmilla showed him into a little parlour, full of the fumes of tobacco, and sped away, but he had a long time to wait, for probably Mother Butterfly’s entire toilette had to be taken in hand.