“Spare yourself—I understand-if your son wished to obtain his wife’s fortune, and therefore connived at the exchange of the infants, and was therefore, too, enabled always to corroborate the story of the exchange whenever it suited him to reclaim the infant, I grant this—and I grant that the conjecture is sufficiently plausible to justify you in attaching to it much weight. We will allow that it was his interest at one time to represent his child, though living, as no more; but you must allow also that he would have deemed it his interest later, to fasten upon me, as my daughter’s, a child to whom she never gave birth. Here we entangle ourselves in a controversy without data, without facts. Let us close it. Believe what you please. Why should I shake convictions that render you happy? Be equally forbearing with me. I do full justice to your Sophy’s charming qualities. In herself, the proudest parent might rejoice to own her; but I cannot acknowledge her to be the daughter of Matilda Darrell. And the story that assured you she was your grandchild, still more convinces me that she is not mine!”
“But be not thus inflexible, I implore you;—you can be so kind, so gentle;—she would be such a blessing to you—later—perhaps—when I am dead. I am pleading for your sake—I owe you so much! I should repay you, if I could but induce you to inquire—and if inquiry should prove that I am right.”
“I have inquired sufficiently.”
“‘Then I’ll go and find out the nurse. I’ll question her. I’ll—”
“Hold. Be persuaded! Hug your belief! Inquire no farther!”
“Why—why?”
Darrell was mute.
Waife passed and repassed his hand over his brow, and then cried suddenly: “But if I could prove her not to be my grandchild, then she might be happy!—then—then-ah, sir, young Haughton tells me that if she were but the daughter of honest parents—no child of Jasper’s, no grandchild of mine—then you might not be too proud to bless her at least as his bride! And, sir, the poor child loves the young man. How could she help it? And, at her age, life without hope is either very short, or very, very long! Let me inquire! I should be happy even to know that she was not my grandchild. I should not love her less; and then she would have others to love her when I am gone to Lizzy!”
Darrell was deeply moved. To him there was something in this old man—ever forgetting himself, ever so hurried on by his heart—something, I say, in this old man, before which Darrell felt his intellect subdued and his pride silenced and abashed.
“Yes, sir,” said Waife, musingly, “so let it be. I am well now. I will go to France to-morrow.”