himself or his lineage live on into a day when the escutcheon is blotted
and the name disgraced? No; if that be Matilda's child, tell me, and I
will bear, as man may do, the last calamity which the will of Heaven may
inflict. If, as I have all reason to think, the tale be an imposture,
speak and give me the sole comfort to which I would cling amidst the ruin
of all other hopes."

"Verily," said Arabella, with a kind of musing wonder in the tone of her
softened voice; "verily, has a man's heart the same throb and fibre as a
woman's? Had I a child like that blue-eyed wanderer with the frail form
needing protection, and the brave spirit that ennobles softness, what
would be my pride! my bliss! Talk of shame--disgrace! Fie--fie--the
more the evil of others darkened one so innocent, the more cause to love
and shelter her. But--I--am childless! Shall I tell you that the
offence which lies heaviest on my conscience has been my cruelty to that
girl? She was given an infant to my care. I saw in her the daughter of
that false, false, mean, deceiving friend, who had taken my confidence,
and bought, with her supposed heritage, the man sworn by all oaths to me.
I saw in her, too, your descendant, your rightful heiress. I rejoiced in
a revenge on your daughter and yourself. Think not I would have foisted
her on your notice! No. I would have kept her without culture, without
consciousness of a higher lot; and when I gave her up to her grandsire,
the convict, it was a triumph to think that Matilda's child would be an
outcast. Terrible thought! but I was mad then. But that poor convict
whom you, in your worldly arrogance, so loftily despise--he took to his
breast what was flung away as a worthless weed. And if the flower
keep the promise of the bud, never flower so fair bloomed from your
vaunted stem! And yet you would bless me if I said, 'Pass on, childless
man; she is nothing to you!'"