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"Oh, Heaven!" breathed the young man, in sickening, deadly
apprehension; for well he remembered that this Mr. Herman Brudenell
was the husband of the Countess of Hurstmonceux at the very time of
which he now spoke.
"Ishmael, do not look so cruelly distressed. I loved her, she loved me in
return, she crowned my days with joy, and--"
A gasping sound of suddenly suspended breath from Ishmael.
"I made her my wife," continued Herman Brudenell, in a grave and
earnest voice.
"It was you then!" cried Ishmael, shaking with agitation.
"It was I!"
Silence like a pall fell between them.
"Oh, Ishmael! my son! my son! speak to me! give me your hand!"
groaned Herman Brudenell.
"She was your wife! Yet she died of want, exposure, and grief!" said
Nora's son, standing pale and stony before him.
"And I--live with a breaking heart! a harder fate, Ishmael. Since her
death, I have been a wifeless, childless, homeless wanderer over the
wide world! Oh, Ishmael! my son! my son! give me your hand!"
"I am your mother's son! She was your wife, you say; yet she never

bore your name! She was your wife; yet her son and yours bears her
maiden name! She was your wife; yet she perished miserably in her
early youth; and undeserved reproach is suffered to rest upon her
memory! Oh, sir! if indeed you were her husband and my father, as you
claim to be, explain these things before I give you my hand! for when I
give my hand, honor and respect must go with it," said Ishmael in a
grave, sweet, earnest tone.
"Is it possible that Hannah has never told you? I thought she would
have told you everything, except the name of your father."
"She told me everything that she could tell without violating the oath of
secrecy by which she was hound; but what she told me was not
satisfactory."
"Sit down then, Ishmael, sit down; and though to recall this woeful
history will be to tear open old wounds afresh, I will do so; and when
you have heard it, you will know how blameless we both--your mother
and myself--really were, and how deep has been the tragedy of my life
as well as hers--the difference between us being that hers is a dead
trouble, from which she rests eternally, while mine is a living and
life-long sorrow!"
Ishmael again dropped into his chair and gave undivided attention to
the speaker.
And Mr. Brudenell, after a short pause, commenced and gave a
narrative of his own eventful life, beginning with his college days, and
detailing all the incidents of his youthful career until it culminated in
the dreadful household wreck that had killed Nora, exiled his family
and blasted his own happiness forever.
Ishmael listened with the deepest sympathy.
It was indeed the tearing open of old wounds in Herman Brudenell's
breast; and it was the inflicting of new ones in Ishmael's heart. It was
an hour of unspeakable distress to both. Herman did not spare himself
in the relation; yet in the end Ishmael exculpated his father from all
blame. We know indeed that in his relations with Nora he was
blameless, unless his fatal haste could be called a fault. And so for his
long neglect of Ishmael, which really was a great sin, and the greatest
he had ever committed, Ishmael never gave a thought to that, it was
only a sin against himself, and Ishmael was not selfish enough to feel
or resent it.

Herman Brudenell ended his story very much as he had commenced it.
"And since that day of doom, Ishmael, I have been a lonely, homeless,
miserable wanderer over the wide world! The fabled Wandering Jew
not more wretched than I!" And the bowed head, blanched complexion,
and quivering features bore testimony to his words.

CHAPTER III
FATHER AND SON.
For though thou work'st my mother ill I feel thou art my father still!
--_Byron._
Yet what no chance could then reveal, And no one would be first to
own, Let fate and courage still conceal, When truth could bring
reproach alone. --_Milnes._

Ishmael had been violently shaken. It was with much effort that he
controlled his own emotions in order to administer consolation to one
who was suffering even more than he himself was, because that
suffering was blended with a morbid remorse.
"Father," he said, reaching forth his hand to the stricken man; but his
voice failed him.
Herman Brudenell looked up; an expression of earnest love chasing
away the sorrow from his face, as he said:
"Father? Ah, what a dear name! You call me thus, Ishmael? Me, who
worked your mother so much woe?"
"Father, it was your great misfortune, not your fault; she said it on her