Page:What will he do with it.djvu/642

632 flexible pride—no pardon there! But own, at least, that you have suffered."

"Suffered!" groaned Darrell involuntarily, and pressing his hand to his heart.

"You have! and you own it! Fellow-sufferer, I have no more anger against you. Neither should pity, but let each respect, the other. A few words more—this child!"

"Ay—ay—this child! you will be truthful. You will not seek to deceive me—you know that she—she claimed by that assassin, reared by his convict father—she is no daughter of my line!"

"What! would it then be no joy to know that your line did not close with yourself—that your child might—"

"Cease, madam, cease—it matters not to a man nor to a race when it perish, so that it perish at last with honor. Who would have either himself or his lineage live on into a day when the escutcheon is blotted and the name disgraced? No; if that be Matilda's child, tell me, and I will bear, as man may do, the last calamity which the will of Heaven may inflict. If, as I have all reason to think, the tale be an imposture, speak and give me the sole comfort to which I would cling amidst the ruin of all other hopes."

"Verily," said Arabella, with a kind of musing wonder in the tone of her softened voice; "verily, has a man's heart the same throb and fiber as a woman's? Had I a child like that blueeyed wanderer with the frail form needing protection, and the brave spirit that ennobles softness, what would be my pride! my bliss! Talk of shame—disgrace! Fie—fie—the more the evil of others darkened one so innocent, the more cause to love and shelter her. But I—am childless! Shall I tell you that the offense which lies heaviest on my conscience has been my cruelty to that girl? She was given an infant to my care. I saw in her the daughter of that false, false, mean, deceiving friend, who had taken my confidence, and bought, with her supposed heritage, the man sworn by all oaths to me. I saw in her, too, your descendant, your rightful heiress. I rejoiced in a revenge on your daughter and yourself. Think not I would have foisted her on your notice! No. I would have kept her without culture, without consciousness of a higher lot; and when I gave her up to her grandsire the convict, it was a triumph to think that Matilda's child would be an outcast. Terrible thought! but I was mad then. But that poor convict whom you, in your worldly arrogance, so loftily despise—he took to his breast what was flung aside as a worthless weed. And if the flower keep the