Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/259

 always—because—he—my father, was her father, and because, before God, she is my sister,"

"Your sister?"

"Yes, my sister. Her mother—you have seen her—is half Spanish, half negro; she belonged to my father."

"Therese your sister!" repeated Philip. "I thought she was—" he hesitated.

"My mistress? Ay, and so does the rest of the world; it may be that Margaret thinks this thing of me."

"Now I begin to understand it all," said Philip. "You tried to separate her from Thoron?"

"Yes," interrupted Robert; "how could I see her openly disgraced and brought to shame? She was gently bred, reared like a lady, in ignorance of what she was. If she had been my own sister she could not have been more tenderly nurtured. I strove to induce her to leave him. She would not listen to me, and appealed to him; in the quarrel that ensued, he forced me to fight. You know the rest well enough."

"Yes," said Philip, speaking slowly and gravely, "yes, I know it all; and I know that with his dying breath Fernand Thoron called upon that woman to bear witness that the fault was his alone, and that you were not to blame."