"Do you think so?" She spoke with humility.

"I would," he went on, "that heaven had given you a daughter."

"Would you have thought her worthy of Richard?"

"Our blood, madam, should have been one!"

The lady tapped her toe with her parasol. "But I am a mother," she said.
"Richard is my son. Yes! Richard is my boy," she reiterated.

Sir Austin most graciously appended, "Call him ours, madam," and held his
head as if to catch the word from her lips, which, however, she chose to
refuse, or defer. They made the coloured West a common point for their
eyes, and then Sir Austin said:

"As you will not say 'ours,' let me. And, as you have therefore an equal
claim on the boy, I will confide to you a project I have lately
conceived."

The announcement of a project hardly savoured of a coming proposal, but
for Sir Austin to confide one to a woman was almost tantamount to a
declaration. So Lady Blandish thought, and so said her soft, deep-eyed
smile, as she perused the ground while listening to the project. It
concerned Richard's nuptials. He was now nearly eighteen. He was to
marry when he was five-and-twenty. Meantime a young lady, some years his
junior, was to be sought for in the homes of England, who would be every
way fitted by education, instincts, and blood--on each of which
qualifications Sir Austin unreservedly enlarged--to espouse so perfect a
youth and accept the honourable duty of assisting in the perpetuation of