to be expected of any woman. Had she courage enough, or, in
plainer words, heart enough to acknowledge him privately?

I called to mind again some of the apparent caprices and
contradictions in Lady Claudia's conduct, on the memorable day
when Michael had presented himself to fill the vacant place. Look
back with me to the record of what she said and did on that
occasion, by the light of your present knowledge, and you will
see that his likeness to his father must have struck her when he
entered the room, and that his statement of his age must have
correctly described the age of her son. Recall the actions that
followed, after she had been exhausted by her first successful
efforts at self-control--the withdrawal to the window to conceal
her face; the clutch at the curtain when she felt herself
sinking; the harshness of manner under which she concealed her
emotions when she ventured to speak to him; the reiterated
inconsistencies and vacillations of conduct that followed, all
alike due to the protest of Nature, desperately resisted to the
last--and say if I did her injustice when I believed her to be
incapable of running the smallest risk of discovery at the
prompting of maternal love.

There remained, then, only Michael to think of. I remember how he
had spoken of the unknown parents whom he neither expected nor
cared to discover. Still, I could not reconcile it to my
conscience to accept a chance outbreak of temper as my sufficient
ju stification for keeping him in ignorance of a discovery which
so nearly concerned him. It seemed at least to be my duty to make
myself acquainted with the true state of his feelings, before I
decided to bear the burden of silence with me to my grave.