“Silence!” he said, hoarsely. “It is not for such as you to understand the love I bear her—my child, my child!”
“Pardon me, the Marquis of Stoyle’s child!” said the sneering voice.
Jeffrey raised his head and confronted the smiling, mocking face.
“Enough. You know my secret, and you alone——”
“Are you sure of that?” said Spenser Churchill, smoothly. “Are you sure that no one else shares it?”
Jeffrey made a gesture of assent.
“No one else. Not even she. To-day I had resolved to tell her.”
A flash came into the watchful eyes.
“To-day—ah, yes!”
“Yes,” said Jeffrey, with a deep sigh that was almost a groan, “I have brought myself to it at last, after much a struggle as you cannot understand. To-day she was to be told, was to take her future into her own hands; to choose—” his voice broke—“between one who has loved her like a father, and the man who drove her mother from his house and broke her heart!”