“My mother left it to me, with all her other few books and possessions.”
There was a pause. Lord Lackington came closer.
“Who was your mother?” he said, huskily.
The words in answer were hardly audible. Julie stood before him like a culprit, her beautiful head humbly bowed.
Lord Lackington dropped the book and stood bewildered.
“Rose’s child?” he said—“Rose’s child?”
Then, approaching her, he placed his hand on her arm.
“Let me look at you,” he commanded.
Julie raised her eyes to him, and at the same time dumbly held out to him a miniature she had been keeping hidden in her hand. It was one of the miniatures from the locked triptych.
He took it, looked from the pictured to the living face, then, turning away with a groan, he covered his face with his hands and fell again into the chair from which he had risen.
Julie hurried to him. Her own eyes were wet with tears. After a moment’s hesitation she knelt down beside him.
“I ought to ask your pardon for not having told you before,” she murmured.
It was some time before Lord Lackington looked up. When at last his hands dropped, the face they uncovered was very white and old.
“So you,” he said, almost in a whisper, “are the child she wrote to me about before she died?”
Julie made a sign of assent.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“She was thirty-two when I saw her last.”
There was a silence. Julie lifted one of his hands and kissed it. But he took no notice.
“You know that I was going to her, that I should have reached her in time”—the words seemed wrung from him—“but that I was myself dangerously ill?”
“I know. I remember it all.”
“Did she speak of me?”
“Not often. She was very reserved, you remember. But not long before she died—she seemed half asleep—I heard her say, ‘Papa!—Blanche!’ and she smiled.”
Lord Lackington’s face contracted, and the slow tears of old age stood in his eyes.
“You are like her in some ways,” he said, brusquely, as though to cover his emotion; “but not very like her.”
“She always thought I was like you.”
A cloud came over Lord Lackington’s face. Julie rose from her knees and sat beside him. He lost himself a few moments amid the painful ghosts of memory. Then, turning to her abruptly, he said:
“You have wondered, I dare say, why I was so hard—why, for seventeen years, I cast her off?”
“Yes, often. You could have come to see us without anybody knowing. Mother loved you very much.”
Her voice was low and sad. Lord Lackington rose, fidgeted restlessly with some of the small ornaments on the mantelpiece, and at last turned to her.
“She brought dishonor,” he said, in the same stifled voice, “and the women of our family have always been stainless. But that I could have forgiven. After a time I should have resumed relations—private relations—with her. But it was your father who stood in the way. I was then—I am now—you saw me with that young fellow just now—quarrelsome and hot-tempered. It is my nature.” He drew himself up obstinately. “I can’t help it. I take great pains to inform myself, then I cling to my opinions tenaciously, and in argument my temper gets the better of me. Your father, too, was hot-tempered. He came, with my consent, once to see me—after your mother had left her husband—to try and bring about some arrangement between us. It was the Chartist time. He was a Radical, a Socialist of the most extreme views. In the course of our conversation something was said that excited him. He went off at score. I became enraged, and met him with equal violence. We had a furious argument, which ended in each insulting the other past forgiveness. We parted enemies for life. I never could bring myself to see him afterwards, nor to run the risk of seeing him. Your mother took his side and espoused his opinions while he lived. After his death, I suppose, she was too proud and sore to write to me. I wrote to her once—it was not the letter it might have been. She did not reply till she felt herself dying. That is the explanation of what, no doubt, must seem strange to you.”
He turned to her almost pleadingly. A deep flush had replaced the pallor of his first emotion, as though in the presence of these primal realities of love, death, and sorrow which she had recalled to him, his old quarrel, on a political difference, cut but a miserable figure.
“No,” she said, sadly, “not very strange. I understood my father—my dear father,” she added, with soft, deliberate tenderness.
Lord Lackington was silent a little, then he threw her a sudden, penetrating look.
“You have been in London three years. You ought to have told me before.”
It was Julie’s turn to color.
“Lady Henry bound me to secrecy.”
“Lady Henry did wrong,” he said, with emphasis. Then he asked, jealously, with a touch of his natural irascibility, “Who else has been in the secret?”
“Four people, at most—the Duchess, first of all. I couldn’t help it,” she pleaded. “I was so unhappy with Lady Henry.”
“You should have come to me. It was my right.”
“But”—she dropped her head—“you had made it a condition that I should not trouble you.”
He was silenced; and once more he leaned against the mantelpiece and hid his face from her, till, by a secret impulse, both moved. She rose and approached him; he laid his hands on her arms. With his persistent instinct for the lovely or romantic he perceived, with sudden pleasure, the grave, poetic beauty of her face and delicate form. Emotion had softened away all that was harsh; a quivering charm hovered over the features. With a strange pride, and a sense of mystery, he recognized his daughter and his race.
“For my Rose’s child,” he said, gently, and, stooping, he kissed her on the brow. She broke out into weeping, leaning against his shoulder, while the old man comforted and soothed her.
XV
After the
