“Before he went to battle!” said the lady, “before he went to death!” Her voice became choked in suffocating sobs, and she wept again long and bitterly.

“Nay, but tell me more,” said Wilton—­“in pity, tell me more.  Do I not surely recollect his face, too?” and he pointed to Green, “and the sparkling sea-shore? and sailing long upon the ocean?  Tell me more, oh, tell me more!”

“I must not yet, Wilton,” she replied—­“I must not yet.  They tell me it is dangerous, and I believe it is.  Struggles must soon take place, changes must inevitably ensue, and I would not—­no, not for all the world, I would not that your young life should be plunged into those terrible contentions, which have swallowed up, as a dark whirlpool, the existence of so many of your race.  If our hopes be true, the way to fortune and rank will be open to you at once:  or there is no such a thing as gratitude in the world.  If not, you will have the means of living in quiet and tranquillity, and if you will, of struggling for higher things; for within six months the whole shall be told to you.  Ask me not! ask me not!” she added, seeing him about to speak—­“I have promised in this matter to be guided by others, and I must say no more.”

“But who is he?” continued Wilton, pointing to Green.  The lady looked first at him, and then at their companion, with a faint, even a melancholy, smile.

“He is one,” she replied, “whom you must trust, for he has ever guided others better and more successfully than he has guided himself.  He is one who has every title to direct you.”

“This is all very strange,” said Wilton, “and it is painful, too.  You do not know—­you cannot tell, how painful it is to live, as it were, in a dark cloud, knowing nothing either of the future or the past.”

The lady looked down sadly upon the ground.

“There are, sometimes,” she said, “certainties which are far more terrible than doubts.  Be contented, Wilton, till you hear more:  when you do hear more, you will hear much painful matter; you will have much to undergo, and you will need courage, determination, and strength of mind.  In the meanwhile, as from your earliest years, careful, anxious, zealous, eyes have watched over you, marked your every movement, traced your every step, even while you thought yourself abandoned, forgotten, and neglected:  so shall it be till the whole is explained to you.  Thenceforth you will rule your own conduct, judge, determine, and act for yourself.  We know, we are sure, that you will act nobly, uprightly, and well in the meanwhile, and that you will do no deed which at a future period may not befit any station and any race to acknowledge.”

Wilton mused deeply for several moments, and then raising his eyes to the lady’s face, he demanded, in a low tone—­

“Answer me only one question more.  Am I the son of Lord Sunbury?”

The blood rushed violently up into the lady’s countenance.