“The child of your husband and not your child! The younger sister of your daughter, and you living!” exclaimed the wretched girl, sinking, withering, shriveling as it were before the fell blast of this burning and consuming revelation. At last she groaned forth in tones of unutterable sorrow: “Oh! oh! was it right, Heaven! was it well, Heaven! just as I had made a great sacrifice to duty, and achieved a great moral victory; was it well to strike me in my pride of place, and bring me down so low! so low!” Then with another spasmodic outbreak of energy, she exclaimed: “Unsay those words! Unsay them, or see me die before you! Take all I have—wealth, rank, prospects, hopes! all, all! but, for the love of God, unsay those words! Take all, all! but leave me my honorable name! Take all, all! but let me go an honored, if an humble bride, to my husband’s home! Oh, for the pity of God!”
Again Mrs. Garnet threw her arms around the cowering form of the wretched girl, as though she would envelop, sustain, save her in this trying moment, by the might of love; and saying:
“My dearest Garnet! my love! my love! you shall go an honorable and an honored bride to your husband’s home. One whom I will take to my bosom thus—is a worthy match for any man. You should have been my own daughter, Garnet, but that I was cheated out of you; but I claim you now. You are my husband’s child, and the express image of his person; therefore you should have been my child; therefore I claim you now to be my child of right! I loved your father, Garnet! I love you! Believe me! Do not cover your face, and turn it from me. Let me kiss you. Do not grieve so.”
“Grieve!” exclaimed the sinking girl, in a voice of anguish; “I do not grieve, lady! I die! Grieve! Oh, look you, madam! If I had suffered the loss of friends by death, or what is worse, by treachery; if I were miserably poor, ill, and abandoned; if I were dying of disease, want, and neglect; if I were misjudged, slandered, and persecuted; if I were unjustly charged, falsely imprisoned, and innocently doomed to death; if I were suffering any other anguish of mind, or agony of body, then I might grieve—but now! now! that I know myself a living, breathing monument of guilt!” A terrible shudder shook her frame and arrested her speech—her form collapsed and sank more than before—and it was in a dying voice she resumed: “Now that I know myself infected by worse than leprosy”—she paused and looked at herself from head to foot; she stretched forth her beautiful brown arm, frosted with pearls and diamonds, and surveyed it; she gathered up the lurid ringlets of her dark hair and gazed on them; then, dropping her arms wearily, she continued—“I was not so vain as grateful for my beauty. But now! oh, God! to think that every atom of flesh, and every drop of blood, and every nerve and vein to my heart’s core is pervaded, permeated with sin and reproach! sin and reproach! Oh, God! oh, God, quickly take back the soul Thou didst send into this shape of sin!”
Once more her form cowered, crushed beneath the overwhelming weight of ignominy. She tottered and must have fallen to the floor, but that Elsie sprang and aided her mother in supporting her to a sofa near.
“I declare,” exclaimed Elsie, in her positive manner, “there should have been no concealment; she should have grown up with the knowledge of her parentage!”
“Oh-h-h! doubtless,” murmured the nearly dying girl, “oh, doubtless they should have told me of my birth! And then my soul would have grown up familiarized with infamy, until it became as base as its proscribed dwelling-place!”
“But,” said Elsie, in her calm way, “is it possible you never suspected this? Is it possible that, when you came home from school, with all your faculties alive and keen, you could have looked upon my father’s portrait, and looked upon your own reflection in the glass, and not be struck by the resemblance, the identity of the two faces? Is it possible that you did not suspect?”
“Suspect this! suspect my birth! suspect my shame! Oh, woman, woman! you found me proud and joyous! how could I have suspected this? You found me living! how could I have suspected this and lived?” she exclaimed, in a voice of indescribable grief and reproach, and then her form subsided, as it were, prostrate, among the cushions. And so it was throughout the scene; frequent convulsive outbreaks of anguish would be instantly followed by the prostration of all strength. And then she lay with her hands pressed upon her face a long time perfectly still, but for an occasional start and shudder. She lay there, with Elsie sitting by her side, until the clock struck eight—the marriage hour. Mrs. Garnet then approached, and, kneeling by her, embraced and kissed her, saying:
“My dear girl, my daughter, rouse yourself. The bitter trial of this needless revelation has shocked you nearly to death. But it will pass away, as all trials must, my love. Garnet, I, too, have had trials in my time, heart-crushing disappointments and sorrows, from which I thought I never could recover. But I have recovered, you see. My sorrows are gone, long ago; gone down the stream of the past, and I have been happy for years. So it will be with you. We all think our first sorrow is to kill us, but it does not. We live and recover. So you will find it. This sudden revelation has overwhelmed you, but you will get over it. We will make you forget it. You will be an honorable and honored wife. You will be loved and happy. Come, rouse yourself! Your marriage hour has struck. Your husband waits you even now; come! Give me your hand! Garnet!”