"Yes, miserable being that I am! I am not her father. Alas! often when I have beheld her enduring hunger and thirst for my sake; when I have seen her delicate frame exhausted with fatigue or shivering with cold, whilst still with angelic sweetness she has seemed to forget her own sufferings, and to think only of alleviating mine—oh, then, how I have burned to tell her that I did not deserve her kindness, and that I was an alien from her blood!"
"Oh father! my dearest father!" cried Pauline, her eyes streaming with tears; "what do you not deserve from me? What is there that I could do, that could half express my love and gratitude? Alas! though I am not your child, the tender care you took of my infancy—your kindness, your affection—" Pauline could not continue, her sobs impeded her utterance.
"My dear child!" said M. de Mallet: and folding her in his arms, he mingled his tears with hers; whilst Roderick and Edric were both too powerfully affected to interrupt their sorrows, and stood gazing upon them in silence, though both ardently desired an explanation of this seeming mastery. After a short pause, M. de Mallet resumed: "I see the astonishment I have caused you, and my heart bleeds for the pain I have been compelled to inflict upon Pauline, but I could not die in peace without disclosing the truth."
"Oh, do not talk of dying!" cried Pauline, still clinging to him with the fondest affection.
"And who are the parents of Mademoiselle de Mallet?" demanded Roderick.
"Alas! I know not," returned the Swiss. "About twenty years ago, I was travelling in England with my wife, who, afflicted with an incurable disease, had been advised to try the skill of English physicians, they being considered the most able in the world. One night, my poor wife being exhausted with fatigue, we stopped at a small inn in a village near the sea coast. The night was tempestuous, and a blazing light in the kitchen tempted us to wait there whilst the parlour was prepared for us. A woman sate near the fire, with a lovely little girl, about two years old, playing at her feet. My poor wife was always passionately fond of children, though Heaven had never blest us with any; and attracted by the exquisite beauty of the little cherub, she took it in her arms and began to caress it.
"'Is your honour fond of children?' asked the woman with an evident affectation of vulgarity.
"'I dote upon them,' replied my wife. 'Oh Louis,' continued she, addressing me in French, 'if I could have such an angel as this to supply my place to you, I think I could be resigned to die.'
"'If your honours like the child, you may have her,' said the woman.
"I started: but recollecting that, from the over education of the lower classes in England, they were all linguists; the circumstance of the woman's understanding what we said, did not appear extraordinary. 'She is my child,' continued the woman; 'I live hard by—and have only taken shelter here from the storm. The landlady knows me very well. My husband has been dead some months; and, as I find it hard work to maintain myself and the child too, I own I shall be glad to place her in hands where she is sure to be taken care of.'