“Deceive you, darling?—no,” said he. “I am your father, and Helena Nichols was my wife.”
“Why then did you leave her? Why have you so long left me unacknowledged?” asked ’Lena.
Mr. Graham groaned bitterly. The hardest part was yet to come, but he met it manfully, telling her the whole story, sparing not himself in the least, and ending by asking if, after all this, she could forgive and love him as her father.
Raising herself in bed, ’Lena wound her arms around his neck, and laying her face against his, wept like a little child. He felt that he was sufficiently answered, and holding her closer to his bosom, he pushed back the clustering curls, kissing her again and again, while he said aloud, “I have your answer, dearest one; we will never be parted again.”
So absorbed was he in his newly-recovered treasure, that he did not observe the fiery eye, the glittering teeth, and clenched fist of Durward Bellmont, who had returned from his walk, and who, in coming up to his, room, had recognized the tones of his father’s voice. Recoiling backward a step or two, he was just in time to see ’Lena as she threw herself into Mr. Graham’s, arms—in time to hear the tender words of endearment lavished upon her by his father. Staggering backward, he caught at the banister to keep from falling, while a moan of anguish came from his ashen lips. Alone in his room, he grew calmer, though his heart still quivered with unutterable agony as he strode up and down the room, exclaiming, as he had once done before, “I would far rather see her dead than thus—my lost, lost ’Lena!”
Then, in the deep bitterness of his spirit, he cursed his father, whom he believed to be far more guilty than she. “I cannot meet him,” thought he; “there is murder at my heart, and I must away ere he knows of my presence.”
Suiting the action to the word, he hastened down the stairs, glancing back once, and seeing ’Lena reclining upon his father’s arm, while her eyes were raised to his with a sweet, confiding smile, which told of perfect happiness.
“Thank God that I am unarmed, else he could not live,” thought he, hurrying into the bar-room, where he placed in Uncle Timothy’s hands double the sum due for himself and ’Lena, and then, without a word of explanation, he walked away.
He was a good pedestrian, and preferring solitude in his present state of feeling, he determined to go on foot to Canandaigua, a distance of little more than a dozen miles. Meantime, Mr. Graham was learning from ’Lena the cause of her being there, and though she, as far as possible, softened the fact of his having been accessory to her misfortunes, he felt it none the less keenly, and would frequently interrupt her with the exclamation that it was the result of his cowardice—his despicable habit of secrecy. When she spoke of the curl which his wife had burned, he seemed deeply affected, groaning aloud as he hid his face in his hands,
“And she found it—she burned it,” said he; “and it was all I had left of my Helena. I cut it from her head on the morning of my departure, when she lay sleeping, little dreaming of my cruel desertion. But,” he added, “I can bear it better now that I have you, her living image, for what she was when last I saw her, you are now.”