Jas. (after a pause). I had thought my atonement was at an end, but my bitterest punishment is yet to come, and I am to suffer it at thy hands. So be it—it is just! Dorothy, my child, whom I have sought so long, I will not break another heart. Thou art free to go to him who has been more to thee than many fathers.
Dor. Heaven bless thee for those good words; they have sown seed in my heart that will bear thee truer love than could have come in many years passed away from him! Sir, thou hast spared his life. When his wife left him it drove him to the very verge of madness, and this last blow would have ended his life!
Jas. Did his wife leave him?
Dor. Alas! yes, many years since—before I was sent to him.
Jas. And he loved her very dearly too?
Dor. So dearly that he would have taken her to his heart if she had returned to him—so dearly that he called me Dorothy because he read her name in mine eyes.
Jas. Dorothy! was that her name?
Dor. Ay, Dorothy Marple, for that is rightly my father’s name. But to save her good fame he gave out that he was dead, and he took the name he now bears.
Jas. (aside). My sin has borne bitter fruit! Oh, Dan’l Druce, give me thy pardon! Dorothy, for the sake of the Dorothy who is dead, give me thy pardon!