"On my return voyage, immediately undertaken, I made the acquaintance of Dr. Gryseworth and his daughter—an acquaintance which proved of great value in facilitating my intercourse with yourself. Once more arrived in Boston, Dr. Jeremy's house looked as if closed for the season. A man making some repairs about the door-step informed me that the family were absent from town. He was not aware of the direction they had taken, but the servants were at home and might acquaint me with their route. Upon this I boldly rung the door-bell. It was answered by Mrs. Ellis, who nearly twenty years ago had cruelly sounded in my ears the death-knell of all my hopes in life. I saw that my incognito was secure, as she met my piercing glance without shrinking or taking flight, as I fully expected she would do at sight of the ghost of my former self.
"She replied to my queries as coolly as she had done during the day to some dozen of the doctor's disappointed patients—telling me that he had left that morning for New York, and would not be back for two or three weeks. Nothing could have been more favourable to my wishes than the chance thus afforded of overtaking your party and, as a travelling companion, introducing myself gradually to your notice.
"You know how this purpose was effected; how, now in the rear, and now in advance, I nevertheless maintained a constant proximity to your footsteps. To add to the comfort of yourself and Emily, to learn your plans, forestall your wishes, secure to your use the best of rooms, and bribe to your service the most devoted of attendants—I spared neither pains, trouble, nor expense. For much of the freedom with which I approached you and made myself an occasional member of your circle, I was indebted to Emily's blindness; for I could not doubt that otherwise time and its changes would fail to conceal from her my identity, and I should meet with a premature recognition. Nor until the final act of the drama, when death stared us all in the face, and concealment became impossible, did I once trust my voice to her hearing.
"How closely, during those few weeks, I watched and weighed your every word and action, seeking even to read your thoughts in your face, none can tell whose acuteness is not sharpened and vivified by motives so all-engrossing as mine; and who can measure the anguish of the fond father who day by day learned to worship his child with a more absorbing idolatry, and yet dared not clasp her to his heart?
"Especially when I saw you the victim of grief and trouble did I long to assert a claim to your confidence; and more than once my self-control would have given way but for the dread inspired by the gentle Emily—gentle to all but me. I could not brook the thought that with my confession I should cease to be the trusted friend and become the abhorred parent. I preferred to maintain my distant and unacknowledged guardianship of my child rather than that she should behold in me the dreaded tyrant who might tear her from the home from which he himself had been driven.
"And so I kept silent; and sometimes present to your sight, but still oftener hid from view, I hovered around your path until that dreadful day, which you will long remember, when, everything forgotten but the safety of yourself and Emily, my heart spoke out and betrayed my secret. And now you know all—my follies, misfortunes, sufferings, and sins!
"Can you love me, Gertrude? It is all I ask. I seek not to steal you from your present home—to rob poor Emily of a child whom she values perhaps as much as I. The only balm my wounded spirit seeks is the simple, guileless confession that you will at least try to love your father.
"I have no hope in this world, and none, alas! beyond, but in yourself. Could you feel my heart now beating against its prison bars, you would realize, as I do, that unless soothed it will burst ere long. Will you soothe it by your pity, my sweet, my darling child? Will you bless it by your love? If so, come, clasp your arms around me, and whisper to me words of peace. Within sight of your window, in the old summer-house at the end of the garden, with straining ear, I wait listening for your footsteps."