"Oh, Mr. Darrell, don't say so! It was such a blessing to think, when my
son was lost to me, that I might fill up the void in my heart with an
innocent, loving child. Don't talk of my abilities. If you, whose
abilities none can question--if you had longed and yearned for such a
comforter--if you had wished--if you wished now this tale to be true, you
would have believed it too; you would believe it now--you would indeed.
Two men look so differently at the same story--one deeply interested that
it should be true--one determined, if possible, to find it false. Is it
not so?"

Darrell smiled slightly, but could not be induced to assent even to so
general a proposition. He felt as if he were pitted against a counsel
who would take advantage of every concession.

Waife continued. "And whatever seems most improbable in this confession,
is rendered probable at once--if--if--we may assume that my unhappy son,
tempted by the desire to--to--"

"Spare yourself--I understand-if your son wished to obtain his wife's
fortune, and therefore connived at the exchange of the infants, and was
therefore, too, enabled always to corroborate the story of the exchange
whenever it suited him to reclaim the infant, I grant this--and I grant
that the conjecture is sufficiently plausible to justify you in attaching
to it much weight. We will allow that it was his interest at one time to
represent his child, though living, as no more; but you must allow also
that he would have deemed it his interest later, to fasten upon me, as my
daughter's, a child to whom she never gave birth. Here we entangle
ourselves in a controversy without data, without facts. Let us close it.
Believe what you please. Why should I shake convictions that render you