eems free from
the fetters of earth. Even when I found myself sitting by his side,
still encircled in his arms and leaning on his heart, I could scarcely
convince myself that the scene was real.

"And Richard, my brother!" I cried, beginning to feel bewildered at the
mysteries that were to be unravelled; "joy is not perfect till he shares
it with me."

"Will it make you unhappy, my darling Gabriella, to know that Richard is
your cousin, instead of your brother?"

I pressed my hands on my forehead, for it ached with the quick,
lightning-like thoughts that flashed through my brain.

"And he, the inmate of yon dismal cell?" I exclaimed, anticipating, as
if by intuition, the reply,--

"Is my brother, my twin brother, whom in youth our mother could not
distinguish from myself. This fatal resemblance has caused all my woe.
Theresa la Fontaine was _his_ wife and Richard is _his_ son, not mine."

How simple, how natural, all this seemed! Why had not my mother dreamed
of the possibility of such a thing! Knowing the existence of this
brother, why had she not at once found in him the solution of the dark
problem, which was the enigma as well as anguish of her life?

"My unhappy brother!" said he, while a dark shade rested on his brow;
"little did I think, when I visited his dungeon this morning, of the
revelation he would make! I have been an exile and a wanderer many
years, or I might perhaps have learned sooner what a blessing Heaven has
been guarding for my sad and lonely heart. I saw you as you passed out
of the prison, and your resemblance to my beloved Rosalie struck me, as
an electric shock."

"And yours to him whom I believed my father, had the same effect on me.
How strange it was, that then I felt as if I would give worlds to call
_you_ father, instead of the wretched being I had just quitted."

"Then you are willing to acknowledge me, my beloved, my lovely
daughter," said he, pressing a father's kiss on my forehead, from which
his hand fondly put back the clustering locks. "My daughter! let me
repeat the name. My daughter! how sweet, how holy it sounds! Had _she_
lived, or had she only known before she died, the constancy and purity
of my love; but forgive me, thou Almighty chastener of man's erring
heart! I dare not murmur. She knows all this now. She has given me her
divine forgiveness."

"She left it with me, father, to give you; not only her forgiveness, but
her undying love, and her dying blessing."