"Remain here, my son," said he, "until I
apprize your brother how nearly you are related to him. Yonder door
leads into my study; I will call you when he is prepared."
The moment Sir Robert joined Pembroke, he read in his pale and
haggard features how much he needed the intelligence he was summoned
to hear. Mr. Somerset bowed coldly but respectfully on his father's
entrance, and begged to be honored with his commands.
"They are what I expect will restore to you your usual looks and
manner, my dear son," returned the baronet; "so attend to me."
Pembroke listened to his father's narrative with mute and, as it
proceeded, amazed attention. But when the name of Therese Sobieski
was mentioned as that of the foreign lady whom he had married and
deserted, the ready apprehension of his breathless auditor conceiving
the remainder yet unuttered by the agitated narrator, Sir Robert had
only to confirm, though in a hardly audible voice, the eager demand
of his son, "Was Thaddeus Sobieski indeed his brother?" and while
hearing the reply, unable to ask another question, he looked wildly
from earth to heaven, as if seeking where he might yet be found.
"O, my father!" cried he, "what have you done? Where is he? For what
have you sacrificed him?"
"Hear me to an end," rejoined the baronet. He then, in as few words
as possible, repeated the subsequent events of the recent meeting.
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