“I can think and speak now. My darling has found her rights, and she is your cousin. The feeling of friendship for you which came so strongly to me, Crosbie, has now a solid basis beneath it. How happy she will be! And yet it is sad, at one and the same moment, almost, to find a father and to lose him. Fate must have led her to his bedside on that day. Thank Heaven, he saw her once before he died! Come—let us go in and tell her. Words seem so feeble to-day that I cannot express half of what I feel. The mystery of her birth has hung over my darling like a dark cloud; and now, by Heaven’s mercy, it is gone, and she will be free and happy.”
They turned and walked in silence along the hall. Pauline was tripping down the stairs.
“Miladi is in the south room—she would attend the déjeuner,” the girl said; and the earl walked quickly down a long corridor to a door hung with heavy curtains.
“We will tell her now,” he whispered; and in another moment they were in the room.
Stuart’s vision was obscured for the first few seconds, then it cleared, and he saw a slender, graceful girl, with fair, pale cheeks and a wreath of red-gold curls, before him. She had her hand clasped in the earl’s; and, as his senses returned, Stuart saw her deep-blue eyes grow dark with surprise, and her face become whiter than the folds of the heavy serge gown that draped her.
In a soft, low voice, tender and passionate, the earl told her all; and Margery stood beside him, hearing nothing save the words:
“Sir Douglas Gerant’s daughter, the cousin of Crosbie, my friend.”
Stuart drew back while the earl murmured soothing words in her ear, and she gradually awoke to the reality.
“He was my father,” she said, dreamily; then, with a sudden rush of remembrance: “Ah, now I understand all!” She sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands. Presently she rose, saying to the earl: “Tell me everything.”
Lord Court put his lips to her hand.