Poor Fenton tottered over to a chair, became pale as death, and trembled with such violence that he was incapable, for the time, of uttering a single word.
"Do you know, or have you ever known, this family ?" asked the other.
After a pause of more than a minute, during which the emotion subsided, he replied: "I have already said that I could not--" he paused.

"I am not well," said he; "I am quite feeble--in fact, not in a condition to answer anything.

Do not, therefore, ask me--for the present, at least." Fifteen or twenty minutes had elapsed before he succeeded in mastering this singular attack.

At length he rose, and placing his chair somewhat further back from the window, continued to look out in silence, not so much from love of silence, as apparently from inability to speak.

The stranger, in the mean time, eyed him keenly; and as he examined his features from time to time, it might be observed that an expression of satisfaction, if not almost of certainty, settled upon his own countenance.