"What? So like Dora Ashton! Then, indeed, she must be not only ladylike but a beauty as well."
"The two would be, I think, quite indistinguishable to the eye, anyway. The voices are not the same."
"Now, indeed, you do interest me. And was it because of this extraordinary resemblance you sought the young lady's acquaintance?"
"Well, as I said, it is too long a story, much too long a story to tell now. I did not seek the lady's acquaintance. A man who knew us both, and whom I met yesterday by accident, was so struck by the similarity between Miss Ashton and Miss Grace that he insisted upon my going with him to the house of this Mrs. Grace."
"Oh, I understand. You were at Mrs. Ashton's Thursday, met some man there, and he carried you off. Upon my word you seem to be in a whirl of romances," she said gaily.
"That was not exactly the way the thing arose. The man who introduced me was at Ashton's, but we shall have the whole story out another day."
"Then what do you think of doing now? You seem in a great hurry."
"I'm not, mother, in a great hurry anywhere in particular.
"You, of course, are wishing to run away to Curzon street?"
"No. They are not at home this evening. Mrs. Ashton said they were to dine at Byngfield's. I am in a hurry, but in a hurry nowhere. I am simply in a blaze of excitement, as you may imagine." He paused, and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. The worst was over. There had been a reference to Dora and no explanation, a thing he wished to avoid at any expense just now. There had been a statement that he had met the Graces, and no mention of Leigh. His mind had been in a wild whirl. He had in the first burst of his interview with his mother magnified to himself the unpleasant episodes of yesterday, as far as Leigh was concerned at all events. Now he was more at rest. He had got breathing space, and he could between this and the next reference decide upon the course he should pursue in that most uncomfortable affair. There would be ample excuse for almost any irregularity on his part with regard to her in the amazing news which had come upon him. His mind was calmer and more unclouded now.
"Well, perhaps if you talk to me a while you may grow cooler. Tell me anything you like or nothing. You will wear yourself out, John, if you don't take care. To judge from your father's letter to you he attached on practical importance to the secret it contained, to the only object he had in communicating it was to keep you still. It has had so far an effect the very opposite of what he desired."
"I know I am very excitable. I will try to be more calm. Let me see. What can we talk about? Of course I can neither think nor speak about anything which does not bear on the disclosure."
"Tell me then what you heard of the Graces in Derbyshire, and why you think them not well off. That may have a practical use, and will take your mind off your own place in the affair."
"Oh! yes. Well, you see Castleton isn't a very big place, and Mr. Coutch is the most important professional man in it, so I found my way to him, and he told me he had been making inquiries for a widow and her granddaughter who lived in London, and I asked where they lived and so on, and found out that Mrs. Grace who was making the inquiries was the very Mrs. Grace I had met yesterday. I told Coutch that I was the person he was looking for, that I represented the other branch of the Grace family, and that I was most anxious to befriend my relatives by giving them what information they might desire. I did not say anything to him about the Polish affair, or the man whom Kate Grace had married, beyond informing Coutch that he had not been a French nobleman, and that I was a descendant of that marriage.
"Then he told me he feared from what his London correspondent had written him that the Graces were in distress, or anyway were far from well off, as Mrs. Grace had lately lost a large sum of money, and Miss Grace every penny she had in the world. His correspondent said he thought the only object of the inquiry was to find out if by any chance there might be ever so remote a chance
of tracing the other branch of the family with a view to finding out if by will or failure of that line some property might remain to those who bore the name of Grace, and were direct in the line of the wool-dealer of the eighteenth century. I then told him that I was not either exactly poor or rich, and that I would be most happy to do anything in my power for my distant relatives. He said that there was not even a trace of property in his neighbourhood to which either of the branches had the shadow of a claim, as Gracedieu had generations ago passed away from the family by sale, and they had never owned anything else there."
"I am delighted you told this man we would be happy to be of any use we could to this poor old lady, and her granddaughter. Of course, John, in this case you must not do anything in which I am not a sharer. All I have will be yours legally one day, and in the mean time is yours with my whole heart and soul. Apart altogether from my desire to aid in this matter because these people are your people, it would, of course, be my duty to do so, because they are your dead father's people. You own you are restless. Why not go to them and tell them all? Say they have friends and well-wishers in us, and that I will call upon them to-morrow."