"Dear Madam,
"Mr. James Burrows, solicitor, of Lincoln's Inn, wrote me a few weeks ago, with a view to ascertaining some facts regarding the Graces of Gracedieu----"
"Stop," said Mrs. Grace, "where is the letter dated from?"
"Castleton, Derbyshire," answered the girl with some awakening of interest in her voice and manner.
"Wait a minute, Edith." The old woman rose excitedly and came to the window. "I must tell you, dear, that when first Mr. Burrows wrote me to say the bank had failed, and that your money and mine were gone, I went to him, as you know, and got no hope of ever saving anything out of the bank. But I did not tell you then, for I was ashamed of being so weak as to mention the matter to Mr. Burrows, that I told him all I knew of the history of the Graces of Gracedieu, and of the old story of mysterious money going to the runaway Kate Grace, of a hundred and twenty or thirty years ago. I asked him to make what inquiry he could, and let me know any news he might pick up. I was foolish enough to imagine, dear, that something might come to you out of the property of the rich Graces if we only knew where they are, if there are any. Now go on, dear."
Edith re-commenced the letter:--
"Dear Madam,
"Mr. James Burrows, solicitor, of Lincoln's Inn, wrote me a few weeks ago, with a view to ascertaining some facts regarding the Graces of Gracedieu, near this place. He requested, with a view to saving time, that I should forward you the result of my inquiries.
"I regret to say that I have not been able to find out much. Gracedieu is a small residence about a couple of miles from this. No property of any extent is or was, as far as I can ascertain, attached to the place. In the middle of the last century the Graces lived in this town, and dealt, I believe, in wool. The family were in comfortable circumstances, and one of the daughters, a lady of great beauty, attracted the attention of all who lived in the town, or saw her in passing through. She disappeared and was, so the story goes, never afterwards heard of here. It was rumoured she married a very handsome and rich young foreign nobleman who had been on a visit in the neighbourhood, but nothing is known for certain of her fate.
"Some years after the disappearance of the young lady, Mr. Grace seemed to come suddenly into a large amount of money; for he gave up the wool business, bought a few acres of land, and built a house for himself a couple of miles out of the town, and called his place Gracedieu. From the name of the house it was assumed the gentleman the young Miss Grace had married was a French nobleman. Why this was supposed from the name is not clear, except that the name is French. It is, however, a common name enough in England. I know two other Gracedieus. About a hundred years ago the Graces left Gracedieu for ever, and went to reside, it is believed, in London. Absolutely nothing else is known of them in this neighbourhood, and even this much would not be remembered only for the romantic disappearance of Miss Kate Grace, the rumour she was married, and the sudden influx of wealth upon the family.
"The land attached to Gracedieu in the time of the builder of the house was about five acres. The family, as far as is known, never held any other property here.
"If you desire it, search, involving considerable expense, can be made in the records of the town and parish and county, but I understand from Mr. Burrows that no expense is to be incurred without hearing further from you or him.
"Yours faithfully,
"Bernard Coutch."
The girl turned away from the window, dropped the letter to the floor, and said in a listless voice, looking, with eyes that did not see external things, at the old woman, "Mother you ought to be glad you are not one of the family of Grace."
"Why, child, why?"
"We are an accursed race."
"My child! my child, what folly you talk. There is no disgrace in marriage, no disgrace in this. There was no shame in this, and who knows but the mysterious man who ran away with the beautiful Kate long ago, and married her, may now be a great man in France. He was a nobleman then and honours are things that grow, dear. If we could only find out the title he had. I suppose we could if we tried."
The girl shook her head. "Where there is no disgrace, mother, there is no secrecy about such things. I thought the Graces went further back than that."
"What! Do you want them to go back to Noah or Adam? Why this is four or five generations! How many of the best titled houses in England go back so far? Nonsense, child, I wish we knew what the French title is."
"So there really was no family of Grace of Gracedieu after all. That is if this account is true. And there was no estate, mother, and there can be no money. I am very, very sorry for you, mother."
"For me, child! Why for me? I don't want anything, pet. I have enough for my darling and myself, more than enough. I did not make these inquiries on my own account, but it was on yours that I asked Mr. Burrows to find out for me. Anyway, dear, no harm has been done. Come pet, breakfast must be getting cold even this warm morning. How delightful it is to be able to breakfast with the window open. Tea is such a luxury this warm weather."
It was the only luxury on that table tasted by either woman that morning. The food went away untouched.
When the landlady saw the unbroken food, she said to her daughter, "I know the poor ladies are sorely troubled by their losses in that shameful bank. There's one thing I can't make out about our corrupt nature. The people who are troubled by something wrong with their bodies eat and drink more than is good for them by way of trying to coax themselves to break their fast, and them that are troubled in their minds don't eat anything at all. The matter seems upside down somehow."
That day had not opened pleasantly or auspiciously for Mrs. Grace and her granddaughter. As soon as the pretence of breakfast was disposed of, Edith went to her room and the old woman took her work and sat in the open window.
Edith was too unnerved to think of doing anything that day towards getting a new place. Disappointment and despair seemed to hedge her in on all sides; but she was resolved to persevere in getting a situation as soon as she recovered from the effects of her late discomfiture and shock. The need for immediate employment was all the greater now, for her outfit and expedition to Eltham House had not only absorbed the money she had by her, but all her grandmother could command as well, and there would be little or nothing coming in now.
For herself she did not care, because she had schooled herself to regard herself and her feelings as of no consequence. Until that morning she had enjoyed the sustaining power of family pride. If what this attorney of Castleton said were true, she no longer could count on that support. What were three or four or five generations to one who had believed her name and race had come with the blood-making William? She had no blood in her veins worth speaking about. She was at most fifth in line from an humble dealer in wool, in an obscure provincial town. She who had regarded half-a-dozen of the great ducal houses as new people! She! who was she or what was she? After all perhaps it might be better that one who had to earn her bread by rendering service should not have too far back reaching a lineage. There was less derogation in earning money by service when one came of a race of humble dealers in wool than if one had come of an historic house.
But the discovery had a depressing effect nevertheless. Her grandmother didn't feel the matter, of course, so much as she felt it; for the old woman had none of the Grace blood in her veins. Never had she, while at school, committed the vulgar folly of boasting of her family. How fortunate that was, in face of the fact disclosed this morning. Why, her people had started as small shopkeepers, come by money and affected therefrom the airs of their betters, and the consequence of illustrious race. The claims of the Grace family were nothing more than a piece of pretentious bombast, if not, at the outset, deliberate lying. No doubt her father had believed he was well-bred and of gentle birth, but his father before him, or, anyway, his father before him again, must have known better.
No doubt the house of Leeds could show no higher origin, but then she had had nothing but contempt for the house of Leeds. She would rather have come of an undistinguished soldier of William's, one who never in himself, or any descendant of his, challenged fame or bore a title, than owe origin to a City source. She had believed the Graces had the undiluted blood of Hastings, and now she found they could trace back no further than the common puddle of an obscure country town. The romantic past and mysterious background of an old race, no longer modified the banalities of her position. If she were to choose a suitor of her peers she should have to take one of the bourgeois tribe, and one in poor circumstances, too, to suit her own condition!
Why, if ever she thought of marriage, the fit mate for her was to be found in that line of vulgar admirers she had paraded for her amusement, her laughter, her scorn!
After the discovery of that morning, she, Edith Grace, could lift her head no more.
The hours of the weary, empty day went by slowly for the girl. The blaze of sunlight was unbroken by a cloud. The sun stood up so high in heaven it cast scant shadows. Grimbsy Street was always quiet, but after the morning efflux of men towards the places of their daily work, the street was almost empty until the home-returning of the men in the late afternoon and early morning. In the white and flawless air there was nothing to mark the passage of time.
A sense of oppression and desolation fell upon Edith. In the old days, that were only a few hours of time gone by, she could always wrap herself from the touch of adversity in the rich brocaded cloak of noble, if undistinguished, ancestry. Now she was cold and bare, and full in the vulgar light of day, among the common herd of people. No better than the very landlady whose rooms they occupied, and whom a day back she looked on as a separate and but dimly understood creation.
In the middle of the day there was a light lunch, at which Mrs. Grace made nothing of the disappointment of the morning, and Edith passed the subject almost silently. Then the afternoon dragged on through all the inexhaustible sunlight to dinner, and each woman felt a great sense of relief when the meal arrived, for it marked the close of that black, blank day, and all the time between dinner and bed-time is but the twilight dawn of another day.
An after-dinner custom of the two ladies was that Mrs. Grace should sit in her easy chair at one side of the window in summer, and Edith at the other, while the girl read an evening paper aloud until the light failed or the old woman fell asleep.
It was eight o'clock, and still the unwearying light pursued and enveloped the hours pertinaciously. The great reflux of men had long since set in and died down low. Now and then a brisk footstep passed the window with sharp beating sound; now and then a long and echoing footfall lingered from end to end of the opposite flagway; now and then an empty four-wheeled cab lumbered sleepily by.
The fresh, low voice of the girl bodied forth the words clearly, but with no emotion or aid of inflection beyond the markings of the punctuation on the page. She had been accustomed to read certain parts of the paper in a particular order, and she began in this order and went on. The words she read and uttered conveyed no meaning to her own mind, and if at any moment she had been stopped and asked what was the subject of the article, she would have been obliged to wait and trust to the unconsciously-recording memory of her ear for the words her voice had uttered.
The old woman's eyes were open. She was broad awake, but not listening to a word that Edith read. The girl's voice had a pleasing soothing effect, and she was sadly fancying how they two could manage to live on the narrow means now adjudged to her by fate.
Suddenly there was a sharper, brisker sound than usual in the street. The old woman awoke to observation. The sound approached rapidly, and suddenly stopped close at hand with the harsh tearing noise of a wheel-tire grating along the curbstone. Mrs. Grace leaned forward and looked out of the window. A hansom cab had drawn up at the door, and a man was alighting.
"There's the gentleman who was here yesterday with Mr. Leigh," said Mrs. Grace drawing back from the window.
Edith paused a moment, and then went on reading aloud in the same mechanical voice as before.
"I wonder could he have forgotten his gloves or his cane yesterday?" said Mrs. Grace, whose curiosity was slightly aroused. Any excitement, however slight, would be welcome now.
"I don't know, mother. If he forgot anything he must have left it downstairs. I saw nothing here, and I heard of nothing."
"If you please, Mrs. Grace, Mr. Hanbury has called and wishes to see you," said the landlady's daughter from the door of the room.
"Mr. Hanbury wants to see me!" said the old lady in astonishment. "Will you kindly ask him to walk up? Don't stir, darling," she said as Edith rose to go. "No doubt he brings some message from Mr. Leigh."
With a listless sigh the young girl sank back upon her chair in the window-place.
"Mr. Hanbury, ma'am," said the landlady's daughter from the door, as the young man looking hot and excited, stepped into the room, drew up, and bowed to the two ladies.
"I feel," said the young man, as the door was closed behind him, "that this is a most unreasonable hour for a visit of one you saw for the first time, yesterday, Mrs. Grace; but last night I made a most astounding discovery about myself, and to-day I made a very surprising discovery about you."
"Pray, sit down," said the old lady graciously, "and tell us what these discoveries are. But discovery or no discovery I am glad to see you. A visit from the distinguished Mr. Hanbury would be an honour to any house in London."
The young man bowed and sat down. In manner he was restless and excited. He glanced from one of the women to the other quickly, and with flashing eyes.
Edith leaned back on her chair, and looked at the visitor. He was sitting between the two a little back from the window, so that the full light of eight o'clock in midsummer fell upon him. The girl could in no way imagine what discovery of this impetuous, stalwart, gifted young man could interest them.
"You see, Mrs. Grace," he said, looking rapidly again from one to the other, "I have just come back from the country where I had to go on an affair of my own. An hour or two ago I got back to London, and after seeing my mother and speaking to her awhile I came on here to you."
"Are all men impudent," thought Edith, "like Leigh and this one. What have we to do with him or his mother, or his visit to the country?"
"Oh!" cried Mrs. Grace. "I know. I understand. You've been to Millway and Eltham House with Mr. Leigh, and you have been kind enough to bring us news of my grand-daughter's luggage."
"Eh? What?" He looked in astonishment from one to the other.
"Are all men," thought Edith indignantly, "so pushing, and impudent, and interfering? What insolence of this man to call at such an hour about my luggage!"
"Eltham House? Millway? Miss Grace's luggage? Believe me, I do not understand." Again his eyes wandered in confused amazement from one to the other.
"My grand-daughter left Mr. Leigh's house early yesterday morning and did not bring her luggage with her," said the old woman severely. "If you have not called on behalf of Mr. Leigh about the luggage, may I ask to what you are referring when you say you have been to the country and found out something of interest to me?"
"But I have not said I have been to Mr. Leigh's place in the country. May I ask you where it is?"
"Near Millway, on the south coast; Sussex, I think."
"I don't know where Millway is. I have never been there; I have not come from the south. I have been in the Midlands since I had the pleasure of seeing you yesterday."
"The Midlands? The Midlands?" said the old woman, leaning forward and looking at him keenly.
Edith's face changed almost imperceptibly. She showed a faint trace of interest.
"Yes; I have just come back from Derbyshire. You are interested in Derbyshire, aren't you?"
"Go on," said the old woman eagerly. She was now trembling, and caught the arms of her easy chair to steady her hands.
"In Derbyshire I had occasion to visit Castleton, and there I met a Mr. Coutch, who said he had been in communication with you respecting your family--the Graces of Gracedieu, in the neighbourhood of Castleton."
"Yes, yes," said the old woman impatiently. "That is quite right. I had a letter from Mr. Coutch this morning, saying the Graces had left the place long ago, and owned no property in the place. Have you any other--any better news?"
"Not respecting the Graces and Gracedieu, as far as your questions go."
"Oh," said the old woman, and with a sigh she sank back in the chair, her interest gone. "The Graces are a Derbyshire family, and as my grand-daughter has just lost all her little fortune, I was anxious to know if there were any traces of her people in Derbyshire still."
The eyes of the man moved to the girl and rested on her.
"I am sorry to hear Miss Grace has lost her fortune," he said softly. "Very sorry indeed."
"It was not very much," said the old woman, becoming garrulous and taking it for granted Hanbury was an intimate friend of Leigh's and knew all the dwarf's affairs, "and the loss of it was what made my granddaughter accept the companionship to old Mrs. Leigh down at Eltham House, near Millway. Miss Grace could not endure Mr. Leigh, and left, without her luggage, a few hours after arriving there. That was why I thought you came about Miss Grace's luggage."
"Miss Grace a companion to Mr. Leigh's mother?" cried the young man in a tone of indignant protest. "What!" he thought. "This lovely creature mewed up in the same 'house with that little, unsightly creature?"
"Yes. But she stayed only a few hours. In fact she ran away, as no doubt your friend told you."
"Mr. Leigh told me absolutely nothing of the affair; and may I beg of you not to call him my friend? He told you I was a friend of his, but I never met him till yesterday, and I have no desire to meet him again. When he had the impudence to bring me here I did not know where I was coming, or whom I was coming to see. I beg of you, let me impress upon you, Mr. Leigh is no friend of mine, and let me ask you to leave him out of your mind for a little while. The matter that brings me here now has nothing to do with him. I have come this time to talk about the Grace family, and I hope you will not think my visit impertinent, though the hour is late for a call."
"Certainly not impertinent. I am glad to see you again, Mr. Hanbury, particularly as you tell me that odious man is no friend of yours."
"You are very kind," said the young man, with no expression on his face corresponding with the words. "Mr. Coutch, the attorney of Castleton, told me that a few weeks ago you caused inquiries to be made in his neighbourhood respecting the Grace family. Now it so happened that this morning, before London was awake, I started for Castleton to make inquiries about the Grace family."
"What, you, Mr. Hanbury! Are you interested in the Grace family?" enquired the old woman vivaciously.
"Intensely," he answered, moving uneasily on his chair. He dreaded another interruption.
Edith Grace saw now that Hanbury was greatly excited. She put out her hand gently and laid it soothingly on her grandmother's hand as it rested on the arm of the chair. This young man was not nearly so objectionable as the other man, and he had almost as much as said he hated Leigh, a thing in itself to commend him to her good opinion. It was best to hear in quiet whatever he had to tell.
"Yes, my child," said Mrs. Grace, responding to the touch of the girl's hand, "I am most anxious to hear Mr. Hanbury."
"When I had the pleasure of seeing you yesterday I did not take more interest in Castleton than any other out-of-the-way English town of which I knew nothing, and my only interest in your family was confined to the two ladies in this room. Last night a document was given me by my mother, and upon reading it, I conceived the most intense interest in Castleton and Gracedieu and the family which gave that place a name."
He was very elaborate, and seemed resolved upon telling his story in a way he had arranged, for his eyes were not so much concerned with Mrs. Grace and Edith as with an internal scroll from which he was reading slowly and carefully.
"I went to Derbyshire this morning to see Gracedieu and to make inquiries as to a branch of the Grace family."
"And you, like me, have found out that there is no trace of the other branch," said the widow sadly. "You found out from Mr. Coutch that there were my granddaughter and myself and no clue to anyone else."
"Pardon me. I found out all I wanted."
"What!" exclaimed Mrs. Grace, sitting up in her chair and becoming once more intensely interested. "You found out about the other branch?"
"Yes, I found out all about the other branch."
"And where--where are they? Who are they? What is the name?" cried the old woman in tremulous excitement.
"The other branch is represented by Miss Grace, here," said Hanbury, softly laying his hand on the girl's hand as it rested on the old woman's.
"What? What? I don't understand you! We are the Graces of Gracedieu, or rather my husband and son were, and my grand-daughter is. There was no difficulty in finding out us. The difficulty was to find out the descendants of Kate Grace, who married a French nobleman in the middle of the last century."
He rose, and bending over the girl's hand raised it to his lips and kissed it, saying in a low voice, deeply shaken: "I am the only descendant of Kate Grace, who, in the middle of the last century, married Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski, called Stanislaus the Second, King of Poland."
Edith sprang from her chair trembling, abashed, overwhelmed. Mrs. Grace fell back and stared at Hanbury. It was not a moment for coherent thought or reasonable words. Even John Hanbury was as much overcome as though the discovery came upon him then for the first time. He felt more inclined for action than for words, and thought was out of the question. He would have liked to jump upon a horse and ride anywhere for life. He would have liked to plunge into a tumultuous river and battle with the flood. The sight of lives imperilled by fire, and rescue possible through him alone, would have afforded a quieting relief in desperate and daring effort.
In his own room, the night before, when he came upon this astounding news in his father's letter, the discovery brought only dreams and visions, echoing voices of the past, and marvellous views of glories and pageantries, splendours and infamies, a feeble ancestor and a despoiled nation.
Now, here was the first effect of declaring his awful kinship to the outside world. His mother's was he, and what was his glory, or infamy of name, was hers; although she was not of the blood. He knew that whatever he was, she was that also, body and soul. But here were two women, one of whom was allied to his race, though stranger to his blood; and the other of whom was remotely his cousin, whose ancestor had been the sister of a king's wife, and he, the descendant of that king. This young girl was kin, though not kind, they were of the half-blood. Revealing his parentage to these two women, was as though he assumed the shadowy crown of kingship in a council of his kinsfolk, conferring and receiving homage.
A king! Descended from a king!
How had his mind shifted and wavered, uncertain. How had his aspirations now fixed on one peak, now on another, until he felt in doubt as to whether there were any stable principle in his whole nature. How had his spirit now sympathised with the stern splendours of war, and now with the ennobling glories of peace. How had he trembled for the rights of the savage, and weighed the consideration that civilization, not mere man, was the only thing to be counted of value. How had he felt his pulses throb at the thought of the lofty and etherealizing privileges of the upper classes, and sworn that Christ's theory of charity to the poor, and fellowship with the simple and humble, was the only way of tasting heaven, and acting God's will while on earth. Had all these mutations, these dizzying and distracting vacillations, been only the stirring of the kingly principle in his veins?
After many meaningless exclamations and wide questions by Mrs. Grace, and a few replies from Hanbury, the latter said, "I think the best thing I can do is to tell you all I know, as briefly as possible."
"That will be the best," said Mrs. Grace. "But if the man who married Kate Grace was a Pole, how did they come to call him a Frenchman?"
"No doubt he used French here in England, as being the most convenient language for one who did not know English. Remember, he was a private gentleman then."
"I thought you said he was a count?"
"Well, yes, of course he was a count; but I meant, he had no public position such as he afterwards held, nor had he any hopes of being more than plain Count Poniatowski."
"Oh, I see. Then may we hear the story?" She settled herself back in her chair, taking the hand of her grand-daughter into the safe keeping and affectionate clasp of both her hands.
"Towards the end of the first half of the eighteenth century, Count Poniatowski, son of a Lituanian nobleman, came to England. He was a man of great personal beauty and accomplishments. While he was in this country he made the acquaintance of Sir Hanbury Williams, and became a favourite with that poet and diplomatist. When Sir Hanbury went as Ambassador to St. Petersburg, he took the young nobleman with him. In the Russian capital, he attracted the attention of the Grand Duchess Catherine. When she came to the Russian throne--when King Augustus III. of Poland died, in 1764--Catherine, now Empress--used her influence to such effect, that Stanislaus was elected King of Poland. He was then thirty-two years of age. It was under this unfortunate king that the infamous partition of Poland took place, and the kingdom was abolished. Russia, Austria and Germany now own the country over which Stanislaus once reigned."
"And how about Kate Grace?" asked the widow in a low voice.
"I am coming to that, as you may imagine, but I wanted first to tell you who this man was. Well, Stanislaus spent a good while in England, and among other places that he went to was Derbyshire, and there, while staying in the neighbourhood with a gentleman, a friend of Sir Hanbury Williams, he saw and fell in love with Kate Grace, the beauty of the place in those times. He made love to her, and she ran away with him, and was married to him in the name of Augustus Hanbury, in the town of Derby, as the parish Register, my father says, shows to this day. Subsequently she came to London and lived with him as his wife, but under the name of Hanbury. He sent a substantial sum of money to his father-in-law, and an assurance that Kate had been legally married, but that, for family reasons, he could not acknowledge his wife just then, but would later. Subsequently he went to Russia in the train of his friend, Sir Hanbury Williams, leaving behind him his wife and infant son comfortably provided for. He had not been long in St. Petersburg when his King, Augustus III of Poland, recalled him to that kingdom. Meanwhile, his wife, Kate Grace that had been, died; they said of a broken heart. Young Stanislaus Hanbury, the son of this marriage, was taken charge of by one of the Williams family, and when Stanislaus became King of Poland, he sent further moneys to the Graces, and to provide for his son, Stanislaus. But the Graces never knew exactly the man their daughter had married. They were quite sure she was legally married, and had no difficulty in taking the money Stanislaus sent them. They were under the impression their daughter had gone to France, that she died early, and that she left no child."
"It is a most wonderful and romantic history," said the old woman in a dazed way. The story had seemed to recede from her and hers, and to be no more to her than a record of things done in China a thousand years ago. The remote contact of her grand-daughter with the robes of a crowned King, had for the time numbed her faculties. It seemed as though the girl, upon the mere recital, must have suffered a change, and that it would be necessary to readjust the relations between them.
Edith did not say anything. She merely pressed the under one of the two hands that held hers.
"A very romantic history," said the visitor. "I have now told you whom Kate Grace married. She married a man who, after her death, sat thirty years on the throne of Poland, and was alive when that kingdom ceased to exist. What this man was I will not say. It is not my place, as a descendant of his, to tell his story. It has been told by many. I know little of it, but what I know is far from creditable to him. Remember, I never had my attention particularly directed to Stanislaus the Second, or Poland, until last night, and since then I have been enquiring after the living, and not unearthing the records of the dead."
"And you never even suspected anything of this until last night?" said Mrs. Grace, who now began slowly to recover the use of the ordinary faculties of the mind.
"Never. Nor did my mother. In the long paper my father left in charge of my mother he says he only heard the facts from some descendant of Sir Hanbury Williams. When he found out who he really was he seemed to have been seized with a positive horror of the blood in his veins, not because of what it had done in the past, but of what it might do in the future. He was a careful, timid man. He thought the best way to kill the seed of ambition in the veins of a Hanbury would be to reduce the position of the family from that of people of independent means to that of traders. Hence he went into business in the City; although he had no need of more money, he made a second fortune. He says his theory was that, in these days, no man who ever made up parcels of tea, or offered hides for sale, could aspire to a throne, and that no man of business who was doing well at home, ever became a conspirator abroad. When he saw I was taking a great interest in the struggles of parties in France, he thought the best thing he could do would be to let me know who I was, and leave me his opinion as to the folly of risking anything in a foreign cause, when one could find ample opportunity of employing one's public spirit usefully in England, for notwithstanding his foreign blood, my father was an Englishman with Englishmen against all the world. His instructions to my mother were, that if, at any time, I showed signs of abandoning myself to excess in politics, I was to get the paper, for if I leaned too much to the people the knowledge that I had the blood of a King in me might modify my ardour; and if I seemed likely to adopt the cause of any foreign ruler or pretender, I might be restrained by a knowledge that, as far as the experience of one of my ancestors went, unwelcome rulers meant personal misery and national ruin."
"And, Mr. Hanbury, what do you purpose doing? Do you intend changing your name and claiming your rights?"
"The only rights I have are those common to every Englishman. The name I have worn I shall continue to wear. Though my great grandfather's grandfather was for more than thirty years a king, there is not now a rood of ground for his descendants to lord it over. This marriage of Stanislaus Poniatowski with Kate Grace has been kept secret up to this. Now I wish to bind you and Miss Grace to secrecy for the future. I have told you the history of the past in order, not to glorify the past and magnify the Hanburys, but in order to establish between you two, and my mother and myself, the friendly relations which ought to exist between kith and kin. You are the last left of your line and we of ours. To divulge to the public what I have told you now would be to expose us to ridicule. I came here yesterday in the design of saving myself from ridicule a thousand times less than would follow if any one said I set up claims to be descended from a king. I will tell you the story of yesterday another time. Anyway, I hope I have made out this evening that we are related. I know, if you will allow it, we shall become friends. As earnest of our friendship will you give me your hands?"
The old woman held out hers with the young girl's in it and Hanbury stood up and bent and kissed the two hands.
Then Mrs. Grace began to cry and sob. It was strange to meet a kinsman of her dead husband, and her son, and her son's child, so late in her life, and it comforted her beyond containing herself, so she sobbed on in gratitude.
"My mother, who is the greatest-hearted woman alive, will come to see you both tomorrow. Fortunately all the Stanislaus or Grace, or Hanbury, money was not in rotten banks, and as long as English Consols hold their own there will be no need to seek a fortune in Millway or any other part of Sussex. Edith, my cousin, I may call you Edith?" he asked, gently taking her hand.
"If it pleases you," she said, speaking for the first time. She had felt inclined to say "Sir," or "My Lord," or even "Sire." She had been looking in mute astonishment at the being before her. She, who had more respect for birth than for power, or wealth, or genius, had sat there listening to the speech of this man as he referred to his origin in an old nobility, and related the spreading splendours of his forefathers blossoming into kingly honours, regal state! There, sitting before her, at the close of this dull day of disenchantment and sordid cares, was set a man who was heir not only to an ancient title in Poland, but to the man who had sat, the last man who had sat, in the royal chair of that historic land. Her heart swelled with a rapture that was above pride, for it was unselfish. It was the intoxicating joy one has in knowledge of something outside and beyond one's self, as in the magnitude of space, the immensities of the innumerable suns of the heavens, the ineffable tribute of the flowery earth to the sun of summer. Her spirit rose to respect, veneration, awe. What were the tinsel glories she had until that morning attributed to her own house, compared with the imperial, solid, golden magnificence of his race? Nothing. No better than the obscure shadows of the forgotten moon compared with the present and insistent effulgence of the zenith sun.
And, intolerable thought! the blood of this man had been allied with the humble stream flowing in her veins, and he was calling her cousin, and kissing her hand, he standing while she sat! instead of her kneeling to kiss his hand and render him homage!
"My lord and my king," she thought. "Yes, my king. After a joy such as this, the rest of life must seem a desert. After this night I shall desire to live no more. I, who thought myself noble because I came of an untitled soldier of the Conqueror's, am claimed as cousin by the son of one who ruled in his country as William himself ruled in England, from the throne!"
"And we shall be good friends," Hanbury said, smiling upon her.
"Yes," she said, having no hope or desire for better acquaintance with the king in her heart, for who could be friends with her king, even though there were remote ties of blood between them?
He caught the tone of doubt in the voice, and misconstrued it. "You will not be so unkind, so unjust, as to visit my intrusion of yesterday upon me?"
"No." How should one speak to a king when one could not use the common titles or forms?
"You must know that the man I came with yesterday told me if I accompanied him he would show me something more wonderful than miracle gold."
"Yes," she said, for he paused, and her answer by some word or note was necessary to show she was hearkening.
"And I came and saw you, Edith, but did not then know you were my cousin, nor did you dream it?"
"No."
"You are the only relative I have living, except my mother, and you will try and not be distant and cold with me?"
"Yes, I will try." But in the tone there was more than doubt.
"And you will call me John or Jack?"
"Oh!--no--no--no!" She slipped from her chair and knelt close to where he stood.
"Are you faint?" he cried, bending over her anxiously.
"I am better now," she said, rising.
Unknown to him she had stooped and kissed his hand.