In an instant, however, all was plain, and together with the discovery there came the pangs of remorse and terror and anguish. She could understand all. He, the escaped convict, had come to England, and was supposed to be dead. He had lived, under a false name, a life of constant and vigilant terror. He kept his secret from all the world. Oh, if he had only told her! Now the letter of Miss Plympton was all plain, and she wondered how she had been so blind.
“Oh!” she moaned, in a scarce audible voice, “why did you not tell me?”
“Oh, Edith darling! my child! my only love!” murmured Frederick Dalton, bending low over her, and infolding her trembling frame in his own trembling arms; “my sweet daughter, if you could only have known how I yearned over you! But I delayed to tell you. It was the one sweet hope of my life to redeem my name from its foul stain, and then declare myself. I wanted you to get your father back as he had left you, without this abhorrent crime laid to his charge. I did wrong not to trust you. It was a bitter, bitter error. But I had so set my heart on it. It was all for your sake, Edith—all, darling, for your sake!”
Edith could bear no more. Every one of these words was a fresh stab to her remorseful heart—every tone showed to her the depth of love that lay in that father's heart, and revealed to her the suffering that she must have caused. It was too much; and with a deep groan she sank away from his arms upon the floor. She clasped his knees—she did not dare to look up. She wished only to be a suppliant. He himself had prophesied this. His terrible warnings sounded even now in her ears. She had only one thought—to humble herself in the dust before that injured father.
Dalton tried to raise her up.
“My darling!” he cried, “my child! you must not—you will break my heart!”
“Oh,” moaned Edith, “if it is not already broken, how can you ever forgive me?—how can you call me your child?”
“My child! my child!” said Dalton. “It was for you that I lived. If it had not been for the thought of you, I should have died long since. It was for your sake that I came home. It is for you only that I live now. There is nothing for me to forgive. Look up at me. Let me see your darling face. Let me hear you say one word—only one word—the word that I have hungered and thirsted to hear. Call me father.”
“Father! oh, father! dear father!” burst forth Edith, clinging to him with convulsive energy, and weeping bitterly.
“Oh, my darling!” said Dalton, “I was to blame. How could you have borne what I expected you to bear, when I would not give you my confidence? Do not let us speak of forgiveness. You loved your father all the time, and you thought that I was his enemy and yours.”