General Grant eagerly.
“Lord Bellefield,” was the reply, in a clear, distinct, though feeble tone of voice.
“What proof can you give me of this?” was the cautious rejoinder.
“These letters,” returned the girl, producing a small packet from beneath her pillow.
The General took them, examined the post-marks and the seals, compared the signatures with that of a letter he took out of his pocket, read two or three of them and then returned them, muttering in a voice that trembled with suppressed rage, “They are genuine, and they are his.”
“The rest of my tale is soon told,” resumed Jane Hardy. “Lord Bellefield had left debts behind him, and when it was known he had quitted Rome, not meaning to return, those to whom he owed money seized the few valuables that I possessed (chiefly dresses and trinkets which he had given me), and my last hope, that of returning to England, was taken from me.” Here a fit of coughing, prolonged till it seemed as though it must annihilate her feeble frame, effectually interrupted the speaker. Her brother held a strengthening cordial to her parched lips, and after a lapse of some minutes she was enabled to resume her narration, though her voice was so weak and husky that it was with difficulty her auditor could catch her words. “I have little more to tell,” she said. “I suffered much, very much misery, but, thanks to the kindness of some sisters of charity (rightly were they so called), I was saved from the depths of degradation into which too many, deserted as I was, have been forced.” Again she paused from weakness, and with the tenderness of a woman Miles Hardy wiped the cold dews of approaching death from her brow, and put back the rich masses of her (even yet) beautiful hair. The General was visibly affected.
“Can nothing be done to save her?” he said; “I will ascertain who are the most skilful physicians in Venice and send them to her. No money shall be spared.”
A dark look flitted across Miles’s face, but the dying girl turned towards the speaker, and a faint smile testified that she had heard and understood him.
“Tell me,” she whispered, “that my last moments have not been spent in vain. Your daughter—they say she is good and beautiful; he will take her heart for the plaything of an hour and then crush it as he has crushed mine. You will not let her marry him?”
“Sooner would I see her stretched on her death-bed before me,” was the stern rejoinder.