THE startled hermit glared from his nursling to Margaret, and from her to him, in amazement, equalled only by his agitation at her so unexpected return. The child lay asleep on his left arm, and she was at his right knee; no longer the pale, scared, panting girl he had overpowered so easily an hour or two ago, but an imperial beauty, with blushing cheeks and sparkling eyes, and lips sweetly parted in triumph, and her whole face radiant with a look he could not quite read; for he had never yet seen it on her; maternal pride.
He stared and stared from the child to her, in throbbing amazement.
"Us?" he gasped at last. And still his wonder-stricken eyes turned to and fro.
Margaret was surprised in her turn. It was an age of impressions not facts. "What!" she cried, "doth not a father know his own child? and a man of God, too? Fie, Gerard, to pretend! nay, thou art too wise, too good, not to have—why I watched thee: and e'en now look at you twain! 'Tis thine own flesh and blood thou holdest to thine heart."
Clement trembled. "What words are these," he stammered, "this angel mine?"
"Whose else? since he is mine."
Clement turned on the sleeping child, with a look beyond the power of the pen to describe, and trembled all over, as his eyes seemed to absorb the little love.
Margaret's eyes followed his. "He is not a bit like me," said she, proudly; "but oh at whiles he is thy very image in little; and see this golden hair. Thine was the very colour at his age; ask mother else. And see this mole on his little finger; now look at thine own; there! 'Twas thy mother let me weet thou wast marked so before him; and oh, Gerard, 'twas this our child found thee for me; for by that little mark on thy finger I knew thee for his father, when I watched above thy window and saw thee feed the birds;" here she seized the child's hand and kissed it eagerly, and got half of it into her mouth, heaven knows how. "Ah! bless thee, thou didst find thy poor daddy for her, and now thou hast made us friends again after our little quarrel; the first, the last. Wast very cruel to me but now, my poor Gerard, and I forgive thee; for loving of thy child."
"Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!" sobbed Clement, choking.
And lowered by fasts, and unnerved by solitude, the once strong man was hysterical, and nearly fainting.