things considered," said the Earl, who took the
interest of a father in Charles, "is it best to say anything to Percy of
her real history?"

Charles thought not by any means, and it was so agreed among the three.
The young man left the room to go to his confident wooing, for there was
not much reason to doubt of his fate, and left Colonel Lunt with the
Earl.

"Nothing can be more honorable than your whole proceeding, Colonel, in
this matter. You might have kept the thing quiet, if you had so chosen."

"I always meant to tell any man who really desired to marry Percy," said
the Colonel; "we never can tell what may happen, and I wouldn't be such
a swindler as to keep these facts from him, on which his whole decision
might rest."

The Colonel looked at the Earl,--"looked him straight in the eye," he
said,--for he felt it an imputation on his honor that he could have been
supposed for a moment to do otherwise than he had done. To his surprise
the Earl turned very red, and then very pale, and said, holding out his
hand, "You have kept my secret well, Colonel Lunt! and I thank you for
it!"

"You are Percy's father!" said the Colonel, at once.

The Earl wrung his hand hard. It isn't the English nature to express
much, but it was plain that the past was full of mournful and
distressful remembrances.

"I never thought of it till this instant," said Colonel Lunt, "and I
don't know how I knew it; but it was written in your face. She never
told me who it was!"

"But she wrote to me about you, and about the child. I have watched your
comings and goings these many years. I knew I should meet you where I
did. You may guess my feelings at seeing my beautiful child,--at seeing
how lovely in mind and person she is, and at being unable to call her my
own! I was well punished the first hour after I met you. But my next
hope and desire was to interest you all enough in my own family to
induce you to come here. In fact, I did think you were the depositary of
my secret. But I see I was wrong there."

"Yes," the Colonel said, "Madame Guyot simply informed me the child's
father would never claim her, and that the name was an assumed one. I
saw how it probably was, but I respected her too much to ask anything
which she did not herself choose to reveal. I think she was one of the
loveliest and most superior women I ever saw, though, at the time I
first met her, she showed that her health was fatally undermined. It was
much on her acc