You ask for confidence, but why not confide in her; why not believe her actuated by the best and the tenderest motives; why not leave it to her discretion to reveal to you any secret grief, if such there be, that preys upon her; why add to that grief by any selfish indulgence of over-susceptibility in yourself?
My dear pupil, you are yet almost a child; and they who have sorrowed may well be reluctant to sadden with a melancholy confidence those to whom sorrow is yet unknown.

This much, at least, I may tell you,--for this much she does not seek to conceal,--that Lady Vargrave was early inured to trials from which you, more happy, have been saved.

She speaks not to you of her relations, for she has none left on earth.

And after her marriage with your benefactor, Evelyn, perhaps it seemed to her a matter of principle to banish all vain regret, all remembrance if possible, of an earlier tie." "My poor, poor mother! Oh, yes, you are right; forgive me.

She yet mourns, perhaps, my father, whom I never saw, whom I feel, as it were, tacitly forbid to name,--you did not know him ?" "Him!--whom ?" "My father, my mother's first husband." "No." "But I am sure I could not have loved him so well as my benefactor, my real and second father, who is now dead and gone.