"I said to Guy Darrell that I would learn, if possible, whether the poor
child whom I ill-used in my most wicked days, and whom you, it seems,
have so benignly sheltered, was the daughter of Matilda--or, as he
believed, of a yet more hateful mother. Long ago I had conceived a
suspicion that there was some ground to doubt poor Jasper's assertion,
for I had chanced to see two letters addressed to him--one from that
Gabrielle Desinarets whose influence over his life had been so baleful
--in which she spoke of some guilty plunder with which she was coming to
London, and invited him again to join his fortunes with her own. Oh, but
the cold, bloodless villany of the tone!--the ease with which crimes for
a gibbet were treated as topics for wit!" Arabella stopped--the same
shudder came over her as when she had concluded the epistles abstracted
from the dainty pocketbook. "But in the letter were also allusions to
Sophy, to another attempt on Darrell to be made by Gabrielle herself.
Nothing very clear; but a doubt did suggest itself--'Is she writing to
him about his own child?' The other letter was from the French nurse
with whom Sophy had been placed as an infant. It related to inquiries
in person, and a visit to her own house, which Mr. Darrell had recently
made; that letter also seemed to imply some deception, though but by a
few dubious words. At that time the chief effect of the suspicion these
letters caused was but to make me more bent on repairing to Sophy my
cruelties to her childhood. What if I had been cruel to an infant who,
after all, was not the daughter of that false, false Matilda Darrell!
I kept in my memory the French nurse's address. I thought that when in
France I might seek and question her. But I lived only for one absorbing
end. Sophy was not then in danger; and even my suspicions as to her
birth died away. Pass on:--Guy Darrell! Ah, Lady Montfort! his life
has been embittered like mine; but he was man, and could bear it better.
He has known, himself, the misery of broken faith, of betrayed affection,
which he could pity so little when its blight fell on me; but you have