"I have found a daughter, sir," said St. James, grasping his hand with fervor. He could not add another word, and no other was necessary.
"I told her so," cried Mr. Brahan, after expressing the warmest congratulations; "I told her husband so. I knew the wretch who assumes your name was an impostor, though he wonderfully resembles yourself."
"He has a right to the name he bears," answered my father, and his countenance clouded as it always did when he alluded to his brother. "We are twin brothers, and our extraordinary resemblance in youth and early manhood caused mistakes as numerous as those recorded in the Comedy of Errors, and laid the foundation of a tragedy seldom found in the experience of life."
While they were conversing, I stole from the room and ran up stairs to tell Mrs. Brahan the wondrous tidings. Her sympathy was as heart-felt as I expected,—her surprise less. She never could believe that man my father. Mr. Brahan always said he was an impostor, only he had no means to prove it.
"How beautiful!" she said, her eyes glistening with sympathetic emotion, "that he should find you here, in his own wedded home,—the place of your birth,—the spot sanctified by the holiest memories of love. Has not your filial mission been blest? Has not Providence led you by a way you little dreamed of? My dear Gabriella, you must not indulge another sad misgiving or gloomy fear. Indeed you must not."
"I know I ought not; but come and see my father."
"What is he like?" she asked, with a smile.
"Like the dream of my childhood, when I imagined him one of the sons of God, such as once came down to earth."
"Romantic child!" she exclaimed; but when she saw my father, I read admiration as well as respect in her speaking eye, and I was satisfied with the impression he had made.
Richard came soon after informed by his father of all I could tell him and a great deal more, which he subsequently related to me. I think he was happier to know that he was cousin, than when he believed himself my brother. The transition from a lover to a brother was too painful. He could not divest himself of the idea of guilt, which, however involuntary, made him shudder in remembrance. But a cousin! The tenderness of natural affection and the memories of love, might unite in a bond so near and dear, and hallow each other.