She bowed her head in her hands, and groaned aloud.
"Forgive me, mother. If I had imagined the real cause, I would never have inquired. Let it pass. Tell me nothing that will bring such a storm of grief as this. God knows I wish I resembled you—only you."
She covered her mother's hands with kisses, and tears gathered in her eyes.
"No; God knew best, and in His wisdom, His mercy for widowhood and orphanage, He stamped your father's unmistakable likeness indelibly upon you. Providentially a badge of honourable parentage was set upon the deserted infant, which neither fraud, slander, nor perjury can ever remove. The laws God set to work in nature defy the calumny, the corruption, the vindictive persecution and foul injustice cloaked under legal statutes, human decrees; and though a world swore to the contrary, your face proclaims your father, and his own image will hunt him through all his toils and triumphantly confront him with his crime. No jury ever empanelled could see you side by side with your father, and dare to doubt that you were his child! No, bitter as are the memories your countenance recalls, I hold it the keenest weapon in the armoury of my revenge."
"Let us talk of something that grieves and agitates you less. May I sing you a song always associated with your portrait, an invocation sacred to my lovely mother?"
"No, sometime you must know the history I have carefully hidden from all but Mr. Palma and your dead guardian; and now that the bitter waves are already roaring over me, why should I delay the narration? It was not my purpose to tell you thus, I though it would too completely unnerve me, and I wrote the story of my life in the form of a drama, and called it Infelice! But the recital is in Mr. Chesley's hands for perusal; and I shall feel stronger, less oppressed, when I have talked freely with you. Kiss me, my pure darling, my own little nameless treasure, my fatherless baby; for indeed I need the elixir of my daughter's love to keep me human when I dwell upon the past."
She strained the girl to her heart, then put her away and rose. Opening a strong metallic box concealed in a drawer of the dressing-table, she took out several papers, some yellowed with age, and blurred with tears, and while Regina still sat, with her arm resting on the chair, Mrs. Orme locked the door, and began to walk slowly up and down the room.
"One moment, mother. I want to know why my heart is drawn so steadily and so powerfully toward Mr. Chesley, and why something in his face reminds me tenderly of you? Are you quite willing to tell me why he seems so deeply interested in me?"
"Regina, have you never guessed? Orme Chesley is my uncle, my mother's only brother."
"Oh, how rejoiced I am! I hoped he was in some mysterious way related to us, but I feared to lean too much upon the pleasant thought, lest it proved a disappointment. My own uncle? What a blessing! Does Mr. Palma know it?"