Frances stood silent and utterly confused. She might have fancied that Jim’s sorrow had turned his brain, but for his intense earnestness and the straightforward way in which he had told his strange story. Again, she remembered facts which gave the story corroboration. For instance, the old grandfather’s solemn expressions of pleasure and satisfaction that he had seen her, and his evident delight in witnessing any kindness she had shown to his boy. Then Frances knew that her father had been a distinguished member of a learned Society, and in his youth had travelled far to serve the cause of science. She had heard of his romantic imprisonment and rescue; and though she never had been told that he had been married twice, she saw that in this respect Jim’s statements might easily be true. Her father had died while she was very young, and her mother might not have cared to speak, to a mere child, of her own predecessor.
As she hesitated, painfully conscious of Jim’s troubled and searching glances, she was relieved to hear her brother step forward. What Austin would say she could not guess, but at least his words might help her own. The boy did not turn to her for prompting, though he stood by her side, his face flushed and disturbed.
“Is it all true, Jim East,—what you’ve been telling my sister?”
Austin’s tone was masterful, and by no means suggestive of a willingness to believe; but it served to rouse Jim’s pride, which had refused to help its owner hitherto. The lad gained self-command, and after answering Austin’s question with a simple “Yes”, turned again pointedly to Frances for some sort of comment. The girl felt that she must speak. Her perceptions were always quick, though they gained in force from her reluctance to hold them final; and now her confusion vanished before the overwhelming certainty that Jim had spoken the truth—that he, the uneducated, shy young blacksmith, his face roughened with exposure, his hands hard with toil, was indeed her own father’s son, and her kin in blood.
“It is all true,” said Jim once more.
“Oh!” cried Frances passionately; “Oh, Jim, I hope it is not true!”
“Not true!” repeated Jim blankly. “You hope it is not true, Missy? Why?—I’m rough, maybe,—but I’d never be rough to you. It is true, Missy; I’ve the papers to show Madam. I’m your father’s eldest child.”
Jim’s trembling hands sought vaguely in his pockets.
“Oh, don’t say it—don’t say it!” went on Frances, in extremity of fear and distress. “It—it couldn’t make any difference if it were true,—don’t you see? We’re not alike in—in anything; we never could be alike now. Oh, I don’t know how it sounds—what I’m saying! I dare say it’s horrid, and conceited, and—and—not fair. But it wasn’t we who settled whose you should be; and it’s your grandfather’s fault, not ours!” Frances hurried out her words as though her own ears were ashamed to listen to them. “He kept you back—he wouldn’t let you belong to Papa,—and now he wants you to come to us, when it’s too late.”
“Too late?” echoed Jim.