“I thank you for the compliment,” said Jessy, smiling in acknowledgment. “But it is not in regard to my personal graces, either external or internal—for I have too much vanity, I assure you, to suppose that there is aught that can be said in disparagement of either—but in regard to my outward position I speak. I pass for the niece of Governor H., and the sister of Lucy Elmore. Now I am confident that I am neither.”
“What is it you say?” said her lover, looking at her in astonishment.
“Mr. Stanley,” continued she, “do you recollect the melancholy-looking lady who was present at Lucy’s wedding?”
“I do,” said he, “and can tell you more than you have probably ever known. She was the mysterious Lady of the Rock, and the noble wife of the exiled regicide. I shall never forget her touching beauty, nor the heroic fortitude with which she hastened the flight of her husband and father on the day when their hiding-place in the cave was discovered. But what were you going to say of her?”
“I felt drawn to her by yearnings of a peculiar kind, and a strange sympathy such as I have never known before or since for any human being. At parting with me, she dropped no tear on my face, but pressing me to her heart with a lengthened and agonized caress, whispered these words in my ears, ‘my daughter, remember your mother!’ Mr. Stanley,” she continued, looking at him steadily, “do you see no singular resemblance in me to that strange lady? Methinks I can behold a marvelous likeness.”
As she spoke, a curious similarity in the beloved being before him to that unhappy lady, whose image was impressed upon his memory, struck him in the most forcible manner, thrilling him in addition to Jessy’s words with the suspicion they suggested.
“She was my mother,” continued Miss Ellet. “I know it by an instinct that cannot err. Look, too, how little coincidence of looks, no less than taste, exists between myself and my uncle’s family. Lucy, too, although affectionate and kind, resembles me in nothing. I am a mysterious and lonely being.”
“There maybe truth in what you surmise,” replied Stanley, who had been pondering deeply during her last remarks; “but call not yourself lonely, unless you positively decline the companionship of one who desires no higher pleasure in life than to share it with you.”
“You do not shrink from me, then, because I am thus shrouded in mystery?”
“Nay,” said he, venturing to take her hand, “nothing that could be either surmised or proven in regard to your parentage, could change the feelings or wishes of my heart toward you. Jessy, I sail in a few days for England, to be absent for six months, and would know my fate from you ere I depart?”