For a long time did Lord Kysington gaze on the child, and as he recognized the resemblance to the features of his lost son, his look became affectionate, and his eyes grew dim with tears. Forgetting his age, the lapse of time, the misfortunes he had experienced, he fancied the happy days were returned when he pressed that son, yet a child, to his heart.
“William! William!” he sobbed. “My daughter!” he added, extending his hand to Eva Meredith.
My eyes were suffused with tears. Eva had now a home, a protector, a fortune. I was happy and wept.
The child, quietly seated on its grandfather’s knee, had evinced no signs of fear or joy.
“Will you love me?” said the old man.
The child raised his head, but made no reply.
“Do you not hear me? I will be a father to you.”
“Excuse him,” his mother said, “he has always been alone; he is still very young, and so many persons frighten him; he will soon, my lord, understand your kind words.”
But I looked at the child; I examined him attentively; I recalled my sinister alarms. Alas! those forebodings were changed into a certainty; the awful calamity Eva had experienced before the birth of her child, had occasioned sad consequences for her infant; none but a mother, in her youth, and love, and inexperience, could have remained so long in ignorance of her misfortune.
And Lady Mary, too, was watching the child at the same time as minutely as myself.