General Harrington arose, and advancing toward Lina, took her hands in his. The poor little hands quivered like wounded birds in his clasp, and she lifted her eyes with a piteous and pleading look that no human heart could have withstood.
"Ah! you are trying me? It isn't true?" she said, with a gleam of hope and hysterical sobs.
"No! it is all real, far too real, Lina! Do not deceive yourself. I would not wound you thus for an aimless experiment. You are indeed my child!"
"Your child, really—really your own child? Oh, I cannot understand it! Ralph—my brother, Ralph!"
Lina started as if some new pang had struck her, and then drew away her hands with a gesture of passionate grief.
"Ralph, my own brother, and older than I am, for he is older—oh, this is terrible."
"You will see," said General Harrington, speaking in a composed voice, that seemed like a mockery of her passionate accents—"you will see by this how necessary it is that what I have told you should be kept secret from my wife and child. Your peculiar relations with my son rendered it imperative. I have intrusted you with a secret of terrible importance. You can imagine what the consequences would be, were your relationship to myself made known."
"I will not tell. Oh! thank God, I need not tell!" cried Lina wildly; "but then, Ralph?—what will he think—how will he act? Ralph, Ralph—my brother! Oh, if I had but died on the threshold of this room!"
"Be comforted," said the General, in his usual bland voice, for the scene had begun to weary him. "You will soon get used to the new position of things."
"But who will explain to Ralph? What can I say? how can I act? He will not know."