"My lord," she said, "your daughter is ill, and I am afraid the agitation may prove too much for her. Tell me, what shall I do?"
He collected his scattered thoughts.
"Do you mean to tell me," he asked, "that she has been kept In complete ignorance of her history all these years?"
"She has been brought up in the belief that she is my daughter," said Margaret--"she knows nothing else."
A dark frown came over the earl's face.
"It was wickedly unjust," he said--"cruelly unjust. Let me go to her at once,"
Pale, trembling, and frightened, Margaret led the way. It seemed to the earl that his heart had stopped beating, and a thick mist was spread before his eyes, that the surging of a deep sea filled his ears. Oh, Heaven, could it be that after all these years he was really going to see Madaline's child, his own lost daughter? Very soon he found himself looking on a fair face framed in golden hair, with dark blue eyes, full of passion, poetry, and sorrow, sweet crimson lips, sensitive, and delicate, a face so lovely that its pure, saint-like expression almost frightened him. He looked at it in a passion of wonder and grief of love and longing; and then he saw a shadow of fear gradually darken the beautiful eyes.
"Madaline," he said gently; and she looked at him in wonder "Madaline," he repeated.
"I--I--do not know you," she replied, surprised.
She was lying, when he entered the room, on a little couch drawn close to the window, the sunlight, which fell full upon her, lighting up the golden hair and refined face with unearthly beauty. When he uttered her name, she stood up, and so like her mother did she appear that it was with difficulty he could refrain from clasping her in his arms. But he must not startle her, he reflected--he saw how fragile she was.