"Well, well, those bits o' paper be all she left behind her,--yes, keep
them, but put back Mark's. Are they all here,--sure?" And the widow,
though she could not read her husband's verses, looked jealously at the
manuscripts written in his irregular, large scrawl, and, smoothing them
carefully, replaced them in the trunk, and resettled over them some
sprigs of lavender, which Leonard had unwittingly disturbed.

"But," said Leonard, as his eye again rested on the beautiful handwriting
of his lost aunt,--"but you called her Nora--I see she signs herself L."

"Leonora was her name. I said she was my Lady's god-child. We call her
Nora for short--"

"Leonora--and I am Leonard--is that how I came by the name?"

"Yes, yes; do hold your tongue, boy," sobbed poor Mrs. Fairfield; and she
could not be soothed nor coaxed into continuing or renewing a subject
which was evidently associated with insupportable pain.




CHAPTER X.

It is difficult to exaggerate the effect that this discovery produced on
Leonard's train of thought. Some one belonging to his own humble race
had, then, preceded him in his struggling flight towards the loftier
regions of Intelligence and Desire. It was like the mariner amidst
unknown seas, who finds carved upon some desert isle a familiar household