“Father—father!” she said, and her voice bespoke in its low and thrilling tones all the anguish he had inflicted—“Father, tell me, whose child am I?”
“To-morrow, to-morrow!” said Mr. D.; “I can go through no more to-day.”
“But is it true that I am not your child?” said Myra, still hoping against hope.
“It is true!” he answered; and rising from his seat with an unsteady step he entered his study.
A moment after, Mrs. D. met Myra on the stairs. One glance in her face was enough. “Myra, daughter!” she exclaimed; “what is this? You are white as death—you tremble.”
“Mother—mother!” burst from the lips of the young girl, almost with a shriek; “they tell me that I am not your child!”
Mrs. D. was struck motionless. Marble could not have been more coldly white than her face and hands.
“And who—who has told you this?” she faltered.
“He told me himself—papa—he has the proofs. Mother, mother, say in mercy that he is only angry—that it is not so!”
With a wild gesture, and a burst of passionate tears, the unhappy girl cast herself into her mother’s arms. The poor lady trembled beneath the weight of that fragile form. She wove her arms around it; she pressed kiss after kiss upon that forehead with her cold and quivering lips. She strove, by the warmth and passion of her maternal love, to charm away the pain and the truth from her daughter’s heart, but she said not in words, “Myra, you are my child,” and the young girl arose from her bosom utterly desolate.