“Jack!” she suddenly exclaimed, “have I made you suffer by my thoughtlessness? Forgive me!”
“No, my dear,” he answered tenderly, “you have caused me no pain; if I suffer, it is on account of bitter memories of which you as yet know nothing, and I pray you may never know. What letter have you there?”
Lyle read the letter, Jack silently pacing up and down the room, listening, with a look of intense indignation deepening on his face, until she had finished.
“It is as I have suspected all these years,” he said, “the dastardly villain! the scoundrel! Thank God, it is not yet too late, there are those who can and will right the wrong, so far as it is possible to right it.”
At Lyle’s request, they compared the picture with the photograph in Jack’s possession; they were one and the same, except that the latter had been taken a few years earlier.
“Jack,” said Lyle earnestly, “can you tell me anything about my relatives? Are my grandparents living? and had my parents brothers or sisters?”
“I have learned quite recently that your grandparents are still living,” Jack answered slowly, after a pause, “as to the others I cannot say; even of your own mother I can trust myself to say but very little, it is too painful!”
“What would you advise me to do now?” Lyle asked wistfully, but with slight hesitation. “What would be the best course for me to take?”
With an expression unlike anything she had ever seen on his face, and a depth of pathos in his voice she had never heard, he replied very tenderly:
“I can no longer advise you, my dear Lyle; take these proofs which you have found to Everard Houston; he can advise you now far better than I; show them to him, my dear, and you will have no further need of counsel or help from me, much as I wish it were in my power to give both.”