Now tell me all about yourself, and what has brought you to me." His voice was so quiet and soothing that I seemed to rest beneath it.

He had not spoken once of religion or the will of God, nor plied me at all with those pious allusions, which even to the reverent mind are like illusions when so urged.

Lord Castlewood had too deep a sense of the will of God to know what it is; and he looked at me wistfully as at one who might have worse experience of it.
Falling happily under his influence, as his clear, kind eyes met mine, I told him every thing I could think of about my father and myself, and all I wanted to do next, and how my heart and soul were set upon getting to the bottom of every thing.

And while I spoke with spirit, or softness, or, I fear, sometimes with hate, I could not help seeing that he was surprised, but not wholly displeased, with my energy.

And then, when all was exhausted, came the old question I had heard so often, and found so hard to answer-- "And what do you propose to do next, Erema ?" "To go to the very place itself," I said, speaking strongly under challenge, though quite unresolved about such a thing before; "to live in the house where my father lived, and my mother and all of the family died; and from day to day to search every corner and fish up every bit of evidence, until I get hold of the true man at last, of the villain who did it--who did it, and left my father and all the rest of us to be condemned and die for it." "Erema," replied my cousin, as he had told me now to call him, "you are too impetuous for such work, and it is wholly unfit for you.