Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/104

 when living--seen them both when dead. The doubt on my mind was dispelled--not a pretext left for my own self-torment. The only person needful in evidence whom I failed to see was the nurse to whom the infant had been sent. She lived in a village some miles from the town--I called at her house--she was out. I left word I should call the next day--I did so--she had absconded. I might, doubtless, have traced her, but to what end if she were merely Jasper's minion and tool? Did not her very flight prove her guilt and her terror? Indirectly I inquired into her antecedents and character. The inquiry opened a field of conjecture, from which I hastened to turn my eyes. This woman had a sister who had been in the service of Gabrielle Desmarets, and Gabrielle Desmarets had been in the neighbourhood during my poor daughter's life-time, and just after my daughter's death. And the nurse had had two infants under her charge; the nurse had removed with one of them to Paris--and Gabrielle Desmarets lived in Paris--and, O Alban, if there be really in flesh and life a child by Jasper Losely, to be forced upon my purse or my pity--is it his child, not by the ill-fated Matilda, but by the vile woman for whom Matilda, even in the first year of wedlock, was deserted? Conceive how credulity itself would shrink appalled from the horrible snare!--I to acknowledge, adopt, proclaim as the last of the Darrells, the adulterous offspring of a Jasper Losely and a Gabrielle Desmarets!--or, when I am in my grave, some claim advanced upon the sum settled by my marriage articles on Matilda's issue, and which, if a child survived, could not have been legally transferred to its father--a claim with witnesses suborned--a claim that might be fraudulently established--a claim that would leave the representative--not indeed of my lands and wealth, but, more precious far, of my lineage and blood--in--in the person of--of--"

Darrell paused, almost stifling, and became so pale that Alban started from his seat in alarm.

"It is nothing," resumed Darrell, faintly, "and, ill or well, I must finish this subject now, so that we need not reopen it."

"I remained abroad, as you know, for some years. During that time two or three letters from Jasper Losely were forwarded to me; the latest in date more insolent