dear boy, I forgot to give you these letters.
You had better read them. I think they are
from your uncle. E. B."

George sat down by the window, through
which the soft air of a morning, bright and
beautiful even in London, came refreshingly in.
He looked at the postmarks of the two letters,
and broke the seal of that which bore the
earliest date, first. As he read the letter, which
was long, and closely written, an occasional
exclamation escaped him, and when he had
finished its perusal, he threw it hastily down,
and impatiently tore open the other. This one,
on the contrary, was brief; he had read the
few lines it contained in a few minutes, with a
face expressive of the utmost astonishment,
when Harriet, whose noiseless step had escaped
his hearing, entered the room.

Without pausing to exchange the customary
greeting, she came quickly towards him, and
asked him "What was the matter? Had he any
bad news?"

"Not bad news, but most astonishing, most
unexpected news, Mrs. Routh. These letters
have been sent to me from Poynings; they are
written to my mother by my uncle, her only
brother, and they announce his immediate
arrival in England. How fortunate that Ellen
should have sent them to me. But I don't know
what to do about sending the news to my mother.
She ought to know it. What can I do?"

"Communicate with Mr. Carruthers at once,
George," said Harriet, in the tone of quiet
decision with which she was accustomed to settle
matters submitted to her judgment. "He is
with her, and knows what she can bear. Sit
down now and have some breakfast, and tell
me about this uncle of yours. I never heard
you mention him."

She took her place at the head of the table.
She was dressed, as he had been accustomed
to see her, with neatness and taste; there
was no change in her appearance in that
respect, yet there was a changeâ??a change which
had struck George painfully yesterday, and
which, in the midst of all the agitation of
today, he could not keep from noticing.

"Are you well, Mrs. Routh?" he asked her,
anxiously. "Are you sure you are well? I
don't like your looks."

"Never mind my looks, George," Harriet
said, cheerfully; "I am very well. Get on with
your breakfast and your story. Routh will be
here presently, and I want to know all about it
before he comes. He gets impatient at my
feminine curiosity, you know."

The smile with which she spoke was but the
ghost of her former smile, and George still
looked at her strangely, but he obeyed her, and
proceeded with his breakfast and his story.

"I don't know very much about my mother's
family," he said, "because they did not like her
marriage with my father, and she kept aloof
from them, and her parents were dead before
she had the opportunity of appeasing them by
making the fine match they would have
considered her marriage with Mr. Carruthers to
be. I know that some of their relatives were
settled in America, some at New York, some in
South Carolina, and my mother's brother,
Mark Feltonâ??queer name, puritanical and
fanatical, with a touch of the association of
assassination about itâ??was sent out to New
York when quite a child. I forgot to tell you
it was my mother's step-father and her mother
who objected to her first marriageâ??her own
father died when she was an infantâ??and on
her mother's second marriage with a Mr.
Creswickâ??a poor, proud, dissipated fellow, I
fancy, though I never heard much about himâ??
the American branch of the family sent for the
boy. My mother has told me they would have
taken her too, and her step-father would not
have made the least objectionâ??we haven't
been lucky in step-fathers, Mrs. Routhâ??but
her mother would not stand it; and so she
kept her child. Not for many years, for she
married my father when she was only seventeen.
Her brother was just twenty then, and
had been taken into the rich American firm of
his relatives, and was a prosperous man. She
knew very little of him, of course. I believe
he took the same view of her marriage as her
mother had taken; at all events, the first direct
communication between them took place when
my mother was left a handsome, and poor,
young widow, with one boy, who did not make
much delay about proving himself the graceless
and ungrateful son you know him to have been."

George's voice faltered, and an expression of
pain crossed his face. Harriet looked at him
kindly, and laid her soft white hand on his.

"That is all over, you know," she said.
"You will not err in that way again."

"But the consequences, Mrs. Routh, the
consequences. Think of my mother now!
However," and he drew a long breath, and
threw his shoulders back, like a man who tries
to shift a burden, "I must go on with my story.
There's not much more to tell, however. My
mother might have had a home for herself and
me in her brother's house, but she could not
bear dependence, and has told me often that
she regarded unknown relatives as the most
formidable kind of strangers. Her brother's
wife made him resent my mother's determination
to remain in England, and do the best she
could for us both on our small means. Of
course, all this was an old story long before I
knew anything about it, and I fancy that it is
only lately any correspondence has taken place
between my mother and her brother. From
this letter" (he touched the first he had read)
"I can divine the nature of that correspondence.
My mother," said George, sadly, "has appealed
to her brother on behalf of her prodigal son,
and her brother has told her his sorrows in
return; they have been heavy, and in one respect
not unlike her own. He, too, has an only son,
and seems to find little happiness in the fact."

"Did you not know of your cousin's existence
until now?" asked Harriet.

"Oh yes, I knew of it, in a kind of way; in
fact, I just knew he existed, and no more. I