Page:Precaution; a novel by Cooper, James Fenimore.djvu/348

336 and perceiving her motive, smiled, as he took down another volume and said,—

"I am not an Irish, but an English peer, Emily. You had the wrong volume."

Emily laughed, with deeper blushes, when she found her wishes detected, while the earl, opening the volume he held—the first of Debrett's Peerage—pointed with his finger to the article concerning his own family, and said to Mrs. Wilson, who had joined them at the instant,—

"To-morrow, dear madam, I shall beg your attention to a melancholy tale, and which may, in some slight degree, extenuate the offense I was guilty of in assuming, or rather in maintaining an accidental disguise."

As he ended, he went to the others, to draw off their attention, while Emily and her aunt examined the paragraph. It was as follows:—

"George Denbigh—Earl of Pendennyss—and Baron Lumley, of Lumley Castle—Baron Pendennyss—Beaumaris, and Fitzwalter, born, of , in the year of ; a bachelor." The list of earls and nobles occupied several pages, but the closing article was as follows:—

"George, the twenty-first earl, succeeded his mother Marian, late Countess of Pendennyss, in her own right, being born of her marriage with George Denbigh, Esq., a cousin-german to Frederick the ninth Duke of Derwent."

"Heir apparent. The titles being to heirs general, will descend to his lordship's sister, Lady Marian Denbigh, should the present earl die without lawful issue."

As much of the explanation of the mystery of our tale is involved in the foregoing paragraphs, we may be allowed to relate in our own language, what Pendennyss made his friends acquainted with at different times, and in a manner suitable to the subject and his situation.