And looking down upon the kneeling woman, clasping his knees in a delirium of false happiness, Mr. Temple, with a face that rivalled in whiteness the snow-covered plains around him, gazed into the face of Nelly Marston!
A suspicion of the possible truth struggled to the mind of the Duchess.
"Mother!" she said, in a voice of much tenderness, raising the prostrate woman from her knees, and supporting her, "why should you kneel to him?"
The tender voice, the tender embrace, the sudden flashing upon her senses of the forms standing about her, recalled Mrs. Lenoir from her dream, and she clung to her daughter with a fierce and passionate clinging.
"My child! my child! They shall not take you from me! Say that you will not desert me--promise me, my child! I will work for you--I will be your servant--anything----"
"Hush, mother!" said the girl. "Be comforted. I will never leave you. No power can part us."
With a supreme effort of will, Mr. Temple tore himself from the contemplation of the shameful discovery, and the likely consequences of the exposure.
"Come, Arthur," he said, holding out his trembling hand to his son; "this is no place for us."
His voice was weak and wandering, and he seemed to have suddenly grown ten years older.
Arthur did not stir from the side of Mrs. Lenoir.