He placed himself at her side, and with some agitation, said:--
"Ellen, the time is come to clear up some of the mysterious words you have heard me utter at Llanwyllan: what will you say to me when I tell you--yet be not alarmed--when I tell you that, though my _name_ is really _Mordaunt_, yet I have _deceived_ you--for that is not my _only_ designation: do not look so surprised and bewildered, my love; I am not _inferior_ to the man you suppose me: he is indeed my relation, being the natural son of my father's brother: he is many years older than I am. Tell me, Ellen, are you afraid to hear the rest?" "No," she replied firmly, though with marks of the most impatient curiosity in her countenance. "I am so convinced of your integrity, that be who or what you will, I am happy in being your wife, and ready to share your station, be it ever so lowly." "Enchanting creature!" he exclaimed, and clasped her to his bosom: "know then, that were the coronet which binds your brow of the most costly materials instead of a simple flower, it is your's by right, for I am the Earl, and you are the Countess of St. Aubyn."
A moment Ellen struggled with the overwhelming surprize: then said: "How could you condescend to one so much beneath you?" "Beneath me!" he replied--"oh, in every thing but the mere accident of birth how greatly my superior! But the surprize, my gentle love, has made you a little pale; recover yourself, and let me see you again gay and playful as when you supposed yourself only Mrs. Mordaunt." He fixed his penetrating eyes upon her: even in that tender moment he sought to discover if any undue pride or vanity elated her; but there was no trace of any such ignoble passion: surprized, astonished as she was, and feeling some diminution of the ease and equality with which she had but lately learned to regard him, Ellen more than half regretted to find him so greatly her superior, and to see herself raised so very much beyond the station her humility led her to believe the only one she could fill with propriety; yet she must have been more or less than woman, had she not felt charmed with the disinterested love St. Aubyn had evinced in making her his wife.
Having a little recovered the emotion this interesting discovery had caused in both, Ellen entreated him, whom yet she hardly knew how to name, to explain the reason of his having appeared at Llanwyllan in a character so inferior to his own; which he did in these words: