Meanwhile Mr. Bales returned. The barrister informed him that he thought it would be impossible to proceed with the case of conspiracy. The officer said he had another charge against the prisoner upon which he could secure a conviction, and so the two parted; the detective to complete his entry in the police charge-sheet and arrange for the appearance on the next day of certain witnessess, and Mr. Williamson to the residence of Mrs. Dibble, where he at once introduced himself to her interesting lodger as Lieut. Somerton’s friend.
He did not hesitate at all about the part he should play. Assuming the position of Lieut. Somerton’s legal adviser, he told the lady that Paul knew everything, and when she assumed an injured and indignant air, he showed her a copy of that very marriage certificate which she had burnt. Nay, more; he said that he knew where her father the showman was to be found, and that her husband, who was in custody, had explained everything to the policeman who had apprehended him.
And yet whilst the barrister was utterly crushing the girl, and even threatening her with a police cell, he felt a strange interest in her. The remembrance of a well-known face which had fascinated him when a boy came so vividly into his mind as he stood before the showman’s daughter, that he grew strangely embarrassed in his manner. Shortly, his assumed austerity gave way, and he found himself speaking very gently and tenderly.
The girl was quick enough to observe this, and she proceeded at once to make capital out of it, appealing to his kindness and sympathy, assuring him that she loved his friend with all her heart, acknowledging to the full how she had deceived him, and then humbly soliciting the barrister’s advice.
Old memories came back to the barrister as the woman continued to talk, and her tears did not fail to soften the hues of that picture of old which would rise up between himself and the humiliated woman before him. Leading her on from one topic to another he induced her to narrate her history, and by slow degrees she repeated to him the heads of the story which she had told Dibble on the Severntown race-course. Feeling sure that this would excite the barrister’s sympathy, she hoped that it might in some way make him her friend.
Watching the effect of all she was saying, the girl perceived that her listener was peculiarly touched; and when at the proper moment she produced that little miniature which she had shown to Dibble, Mr. Arundel Williamson, exclaiming “Good heavens, can it be possible!” threw himself back in his chair and nearly fainted.
Fixing her eyes upon him as he grasped the locket, the woman, with the cunning of the race-course and the lodging-house, the precocity of poverty, and her fixed faith in Carkey’s prophecy about her parentage, felt at once that the hour of discovery had come.
“You are my father!” she said, with an air of pride and triumph. “That lady was your wife.”
“God help us!” said the barrister solemnly. “He visits the sins of the fathers upon the children indeed!”
“You won’t drive me away now,” said the girl quickly; “you won’t try to make him hate me, and put me in prison now. If you don’t like me to be your daughter, let me go away with him; tell him all that about Gibbs is a lie,—he will believe you—he will believe anything—don’t separate us—I will never tell anybody you are my father.”