am pleading for your sake--I owe you so much! I should repay
you, if I could but induce you to inquire--and if inquiry should prove
that I am right."

"I have inquired sufficiently."

"'Then I'll go and find out the nurse. I'll question her. I'll--"

"Hold. Be persuaded! Hug your belief! Inquire no farther!"

"Why--why?"

Darrell was mute.

Waife passed and repassed his hand over his brow, and then cried
suddenly: "But if I could prove her not to be my grandchild, then she
might be happy!--then--then-ah, sir, young Haughton tells me that if
she were but the daughter of honest parents--no child of Jasper's, no
grandchild of mine--then you might not be too proud to bless her at
least as his bride! And, sir, the poor child loves the young man. How
could she help it? And, at her age, life without hope is either very
short, or very, very long! Let me inquire! I should be happy even to
know that she was not my grandchild. I should not love her less; and
then she would have others to love her when I am gone to Lizzy!"

Darrell was deeply moved. To him there was something in this
old man--ever forgetting himself, ever so hurried on by his
heart--something, I say, in this old man, before which Darrell felt his
intellect subdued and his pride silenced and abashed.

"Yes, sir," said Waife, musingly, "so let it be. I am well now. I will
go to France to-morrow."

Darrell nerved his courage. He had wished to spare Waife the pain which
his own persuasions caused to himself. Better now to be frank. He
laid his hand on Waife's shoulder, and looking him in the face, said
solemnly: "I entreat you not! Do you suppose that I would not resume
inquiry in person, nor pause till the truth were made amply clear, if I
had not strong reason to prefer doubt to certainty?"

"What do you mean, sir?"

"There is a woman whose career is, I believe, at this moment revived
into fresh notoriety as the heroine of some drama on the stage of
Paris--a woman who, when years paled her fame and reft her spoils, as a
courtesan renowned for the fools she had beggared, for the young hearts
she had corrupted, sought plunder still by crimes, to which law is less
lenient; charged with swindling, with fraud, with forgery, and at last
more than suspected as a practised poisoner, she escaped by suicide the
judgment of human tribunals."

"I know of whom you speak--that dreadful Gabrielle Desmarets, but for
whom my sacrifice to Jasper's future might not have