“You did, and something tells me that it is my name—the name you have concealed from me so long. I am Ada. Uncle, some strong passion, some awful fear at your heart overcame your caution. I am Ada; but Ada what? Tell me, for the love of Heaven, all, and if you have done me wrong, Uncle, I will, forgive you, as I live!”
Jacob Gray’s voice trembled and the perspiration stood in cold drops upon his brow, as he said, faintly,—
“Water! Water! Water!—I—I am faint!”
Ada, for henceforward we will call her by that name, filled a glass with sparkling cold water, and handed it in silence to the trembling man. With a shaking hand he raised it to his lips, and drank deeply of it; the glass dropped from his nervous grasp, and lay in fragments on the floor.
“I—I am better now,” said Gray.
Ada stood before him—her dark eyes bent on his with a scrutinising glance, beneath which he shrunk abashed.
“Now then, Uncle Gray,” she said, “now that you are better, will you answer me?”
Gray looked at her for a moment or two in silence before he replied; then he said slowly,—
“What if I refuse to answer the question you ask?”
“Then is our compact broken,” cried Ada.