"Well! and I should tell him."
"Oh no; anything but that!" she gasped, bounding forward as if to seal his lips with her hands; then she commenced to walk madly to and fro, no longer able to control her emotion.
Vaughan, more and more mystified, looked at her in amazement. "I cannot understand you," he said.
She gazed at him for a moment, silent and hesitating, then, as if suddenly resolved, she went up to him.
"A word will explain everything. Since you are already possessed of half the secret of my life, it is perhaps better that you should know all."
She paused, and then continued—
"Olivier's father——"
"Well!" interposed Vaughan, now aghast in his turn, scarcely daring to understand her.
"He is Olivier's father!"
And as if broken with the effort, she sank down by the fallen tree-trunk, and sobbed aloud.