the clothes immediately."

"Sir, I have never seen or heard aught of the dear gentleman since;
you must forgive me, I cannot help tears, sir--(the wine is with
you)."

"But the mother, the mother!" said Clarence, earnestly; "what became
of her? she died abroad, two years since, did she not?"

"She did, sir," answered the honest steward, refilling his glass.
"They say that she lived very unhappily with Sir Clinton, who did not
marry her; till all of a sudden she disappeared, none knew whither."

Clarence redoubled his attention.

"At last," resumed the steward, "two years ago, a letter came from her
to my lord; she was a nun in some convent (in Italy I think) to which
she had, at the time of her disappearance, secretly retired. The
letter was written on her death-bed, and so affectingly, I suppose,
that even my stern lord was in tears for several days after he
received it. But the principal passage in it was relative to her son:
it assured my lord (for so with his own lips he told me just before he
died, some months ago) that Master Clinton was in truth his son, and
that it was not till she had been tempted many years after her
marriage that she had fallen; she implored my lord to believe this 'on
the word of one for whom earth and earth's objects were no more;'
those were her words."

"Six months ago, when my lord lay on the bed from which he never rose,
he called me to him and said, "Wardour, you have always been the