"Hush! hush! these words are too ardent—they wound, they repulse me! If you guessed all that I know, your own heart would recoil from them."
"Guessed all that you know!—well, speak out. It must be something terrible, indeed, if it prevents me loving her, after what you have already said."
James Harrington hesitated; looked wistfully at the eager face turned full of inquiry to his, and at last said, in a low, almost solemn voice:
"Ralph, Lina is your father's daughter."
"My father's daughter?" cried Ralph, aghast; "my father's daughter!"
"He told her so with his own lips, binding her by a promise not to reveal the secret to us. Poor thing, it was too weighty for her strength; she grew wild under it and fled to the woman you saw, who claims to be her mother."
"Claims to be her mother! That woman—it is false!"
"I fear not, Ralph! I myself recognized that woman as a beautiful slave whom your father owned when my own poor mother died. She has changed but"——
"A slave—Lina, the child of a slave? I tell you it is false; the dews of heaven are not more pure than the blood that fills those blue veins; there is some fraud here!" cried Ralph, impetuously.
"I fear not. She is certain of it; this cruel conviction is killing her. But for her feeble state, I never could have won her secret. Poor child, poor child, what can be done for her?"