t," said he, pressing the hand he held; "but to come, too, from
_me_,--your rival!"

"Proceed, proceed, I pray you; explain all this--yet explanation! what
do I want to know? Evelyn is my daughter,--Alice's child! For Heaven's
sake, give me hope; say it is not so; say that she is Alice's child,
but not _mine_! Father! father!--and they call it a holy name--it is a
horrible one!"

"Compose yourself, my dear friend: recollect what you have escaped! You
will recover this shock. Time, travel--"

"Peace, man,--peace! Now then I am calm! When Alice left me she had no
child. I knew not that she bore within her the pledge of our ill-omened
and erring love. Verily, the sins of my youth have arisen against me;
and the curse has come home to roost!"

"I cannot explain to you all details."

"But why not have told me of this? Why not have warned me; why not have
said to me, when my heart could have been satisfied by so sweet a tie,
'Thou hast a daughter: thou art not desolate'? Why reserve the knowledge
of the blessing until it has turned to poison? Fiend that you are! you
have waited this hour to gloat over the agony from which a word from you
a year, nay, a month ago--a little month ago--might have saved me and
her!"

Maltravers, as he spoke, approached Vargrave, with eyes sparkling with
fierce passion, his hand clenched, his form dilated, the veins on his
forehead swelled like cords. Lumley, brave as he was, recoiled.

"I knew not of this secret," said he, deprecatingly, "till a few days
before I came hither; and I came hither at once to disclose it to you.
Will you listen to me? I knew that my uncle had married a person much
beneath him in rank; but he was guarded and cautious, and I knew
no more, except that by a first husband that lady had one
daughter,--Evelyn. A chain of accidents suddenly acquainted me with the
rest."

Here Vargrave pretty faithfully repeated what he had learned from the
brewer at C-----, and from Mr. Onslow; but when he came to the tacit
confirmation of all his suspicions received from Mrs. Leslie, he greatly
exaggerated and greatly distorted the account. "Judge, then," concluded
Lumley, "of the horror with which I heard that you had declared an
attachment to Evelyn, and that it was returned. Ill as I was, I hastened
hither: you know the rest. Are you satisfied?"

"I will go to Alice! I will learn from her own lips--yet, how can I meet
her again? How say to her, 'I have taken from thee thy last