“It is because I was your father’s oldest friend, young man,” returned Mr. Brownlow; “it is because the hopes and wishes of young and happy years were bound up with him, and that fair creature of his blood and kindred who rejoined her God in youth, and left me here a solitary, lonely man: it is because he knelt with me beside his only sisters’s deathbed when he was yet a boy, on the morning that would⁠—but Heaven willed otherwise⁠—have made her my young wife; it is because my seared heart clung to him, from that time forth, through all his trials and errors, till he died; it is because old recollections and associations filled my heart, and even the sight of you brings with it old thoughts of him; it is because of all these things that I am moved to treat you gently now⁠—yes, Edward Leeford, even now⁠—and blush for your unworthiness who bear the name.”

“What has the name to do with it?” asked the other, after contemplating, half in silence, and half in dogged wonder, the agitation of his companion. “What is the name to me?”