"Oh, Gerard," she said, bursting into tears, as her head sank upon his shoulder. "Had I not better go with you to London, to comfort him in his sorrow? My father, my poor father! I can never supply to him the loss of his dear son."
"Had he wished it, my sweet cousin, he would have made the request. Public taste has dispensed with the presence of female mourners at the funerals of relations and friends. The gentle hearts that loved the truest and the best are denied by the tyrant fashion the blessed privilege of seeing the last sad rites performed for the beloved dead. After Lord Fitzmorris' funeral your presence will be more needed. It is not until the earth closes her bars for ever on the loved and lost, that we can fully realize the fact that they can no more return to us."
On reaching the county town, Dorothy and her lover parted—one to act as chief mourner in a solemn and useless pageant, which the good sense of mankind ought to banish from the earth, with all its artificial trappings and hired mourners; the other to visit that grave of the living, a prison, and carry hope and comfort to the care-worn heart of the victim of a cruel and oppressive law, which demands of a man to pay his debts, while it deprives him of the chance of doing so.
Following the directions she had received from Gerard, Dorothy went first to Mr. Hodson, and learned from him that the debt for which her foster-father was in gaol, had been settled by her lover; that everything had been satisfactorily arranged with the other creditors, Rushmere having concluded to sell Heath Farm to Mr. Fitzmorris for the sum of two thousand pounds, which would pay all the demands upon the estate, and leave the old man at liberty.
The dry man of business was much struck by the extraordinary beauty of the young lady, who had deigned to visit his dusty office in behalf of the prisoner, and being a widower of some years' standing, without any incumbrance in the shape of children, it struck him that so charming a girl would make him an excellent second wife.
With this wise project in his head, he cross-questioned her very closely, on their way to the gaol, as to her parentage and station, to all which questions she gave such frank and straightforward answers, that he soon became acquainted with her private history.
Mr. Hodson had been employed to make old Mrs. Knight's will, and well remembered the remarkable clause it contained with regard to the child of the poor vagrant found on the Heath, which, if proofs could be actually obtained that Dorothy was the daughter of Alice Knight, whether legitimately or illegitimately, would entitle her to a fortune of thirty thousand pounds, with all its immense accumulations of interest and compound interest, for so many years.
It was a case worth looking into.
The old woman's death-bed confession, which had been made in his presence, to Mr. Martin, fully established a fact only known to them—that the conscience-stricken murderess of the mother had discovered in the corpse of the poor vagrant, her grandchild; so that all that was now required to entitle her child to inherit this large fortune was the registration of its birth. If it had taken place in any workhouse, or public charitable institution, this might be obtained by offering suitable rewards, without the said Alice Knight had adopted a fictitious name.
As the light began gradually to dawn upon his mind that this lovely girl was no other than Mrs. Knight's heiress, he rubbed his hands gleefully together, and told his fair visitor, that if she made him her friend, he might be able to put her in the way of obtaining a handsome fortune.