Herbert gently took her disengaged hand, and pressed it to his lips.
'I am as in a dream,' murmured Venetia.

'The daughter of my heart has found her sire,' said Herbert in an impassioned voice. 'The father who has long lived upon her fancied image; the father, I fear, she has been bred up to hate.'

'Oh! no, no!' said Venetia, speaking rapidly and with a slight shiver; 'not hate! it was a secret, his being was a secret, his name was never mentioned; it was unknown.'

'A secret! My existence a secret from my child, my beautiful fond child!' exclaimed Herbert in a tone even more desolate than bitter. 'Why did they not let you at least hate me!'

'My father!' said Venetia, in a firmer voice, and with returning animation, yet gazing around her with a still distracted air, 'Am I with my father? The clouds clear from my brain. I remember that we met. Where was it? Was it at Arquâ? In the garden? I am with my father!' she continued in a rapid tone and with a wild smile. 'Oh! let me look on him;' and she turned round, and gazed upon Herbert with a serious scrutiny. 'Are you my father?' she continued, in a still, small voice. 'Your hair has grown grey since last I saw you; it was golden then, like mine. I know you are my father,' she added, after a pause, and in a tone almost of gaiety. 'You cannot deceive me. I know your name. They did not tell it me; I found it out myself, but it made me very ill, very; and I do not think I have ever been quite well since. You are Marmion Herbert. My mother had a dog called Marmion, when I was a little girl, but I did not know I had a father then.'

'Venetia!' exclaimed Herbert, with streaming eyes, as he listened with anguish to these incoherent sentences. 'My Venetia loves me!'

'Oh! she always loved you,' replied Venetia; always, always. Before she knew her father she loved him. I dare say you think I do not love you, because I am not used to speak to a father. Everything must be learnt, you know,' she said, with a faint, sad smile; 'and then it was so sudden! I do not think my mother knows it yet. And after all, though I found you out in a moment, still, I know not why, I thought it was a picture. But I read your verses, and I knew them by heart at once; but now my memory has worn out, for I am ill, and everything has gone cross with me. And all because my father wrote me verses. 'Tis very strange, is not it?'

'Sweet lamb of my affections,' exclaimed Herbert to himself, 'I fear me much this sudden meeting with one from whose bosom you ought never to have been estranged, has been for the moment too great a trial for this delicate brain.'

'I will not tell my mother,' said Venetia; 'she will be angry.'

'Your mother, darling; where is your mother?' said Herbert, looking, if possible, paler than he was wont.