"Dear friend," she said, "you have spoken to me often about this child's beauty; look at her well, and see if it will not tell you what her father was."
Mrs. Bellairs obeyed. Lucia, under the impulse of excitement, had suddenly risen, and now stood pressing one hand upon the mantelpiece to steady herself. Her eyes were full of a wistful inexplicable meaning; her whole figure with its dark and graceful beauty seemed to express a mystery, but it was one to which no key appeared.
"Her father?" Mrs. Bellairs repeated. "He was a Spaniard, was not he?"
"I have never said so. People imagined it, and I was glad that they should, but it is not true."
"Who then? She is dark like a Spaniard or Italian."
"Are there no dark races but those of Europe?"
"What do you mean? Tell me, for Heaven's sake!"
"You have always thought me a widow, yet my husband is still alive. I left him long ago when he did not need me; now he is ill and in prison, and I am going back to him. He is Christian, whom you have all thought a murderer."
"Christian! the Indian? Impossible! Lucia, can this be true?"
"It is true."