Methought I, too, knew the voice of the person who thus spoke. The door was opened, and I entered a room dimly lighted by one candle.
"Oh, for God's sake," I cried, "if a priest is here, hide him forthwith."
"Are you a Catholic, my child?"
I looked up to the person who put this question to me, and gave a sudden cry, I know not whether of terror or joy; for great as was the change which the lapse of years, and great inward and outward changes, had wrought in his aspect, I saw it was my father.
"I am Constance," I cried; "Constance Sherwood! Oh, my dear father!" and then fell at his feet weeping.
After an instant's, astonishment and fixed gazing on my face, he recognized me, who was, I doubt not, more changed than himself, and received me with a great paternal kindness and the tenderest greeting imaginable, yet tempered with reserve and so much of restraint as should befit one who, for Christ's sake, had dissevered himself from the joys, albeit not from the affections, of the natural heart.
"Oh, my good child, my own dear Constance," he said; "hath God in his bounty given thy poor father a miraculous sight of thee before his death, or art thou come verily in flesh and blood to warn him of his danger?"
"My dear and honored father," I replied, "time presses; peril is indeed at hand, if you and Mr. Tunstall are the same person."
"The wounds in my hands," he answered, "must prove me such, albeit now healed by the care of that good Samaritan, Lady l'Estrange. But prithee, my good child, whence comest thou?"
"Alas!" I said; "and yet not alas, if God should be so good to me as by my means to save you, I am Sir Hammond's guest, being a friend of his lady's. I came there yesterday."