“Zana—my daughter—my poor, lost child, what has come over you? Do not be frightened—do not tremble so. Look up in my face—let me see your eyes fully. Turner, they are her eyes, my heart answers to them, oh, how mournfully. Zana, I am your father—you should know that, altered as I am, for men do not change like children. There, love, there, stop crying; calm yourself. I have but one wish on earth now, and that depends on you.”
“On me?” I gasped.
“On you, my darling. Listen, I call you darling, does not the old word bring back some memory?”
He looked beseechingly in my face, waiting for a reply that I could not give. My head drooped forward, bowed down with the anguish of my imbecility.
“It is sweet—it thrills my heart to the centre,” I said, mournfully.
“And awakes some memory? You remember it as something heard and loved, far, far back in the past. Is it not so?”
I shook my head.
He bent forward, wound his arms lovingly around me, and, drawing me upward to his bosom, kissed my forehead.
“And this,” he said, folding me to his heart so close that I could feel every sharp pulsation. “Is there nothing familiar now?—nothing that reminds you of an old stone balcony, full of flowers, and a bright little thing leaping to her father’s bosom; and she, that wronged woman, so darkly beautiful, looking on? Child, my Aurora’s child, is there no memory like this in your soul now?”
“This tenderness has filled my heart with tears, I can find nothing else there,” I answered, sadly.