t survive the exhaustion of her confinement
many days. The shock of her death snapped the feeble thread of the poor
father's life. Both were borne to the grave on the same day. Before they
died, both made the same prayer to their sole two mourners, the felon's
sister, the old man's young benefactor. The prayer was this, that the
new-born infant should be reared, however humbly, in ignorance of her
birth, of a father's guilt and shame. She was not to pass a suppliant
for charity to rich and high-born kinsfolk, who had vouchsafed no word
even of pity to the felon's guiltless father and as guiltless wife. That
promise has been kept till now. I am that daughter. The name I bear,
and the name which I gave to my niece, are not ours, save as we may
indirectly claim them through alliances centuries ago. I have never
married. I was to have been a bride, bringing to the representative of
no ignoble house what was to have been a princely dower; the wedding day
was fixed, when the bolt fell. I have never again seen my betrothed. He
went abroad and died there. I think he loved me; he knew I loved him.
Who can blame him for deserting me? Who could marry the felon's sister?
Who would marry the felon's child? Who but one? The man who knows
her secret, and will guard it; the man who, caring little for other
education, has helped to instil into her spotless childhood so steadfast
a love of truth, so exquisite a pride of honour, that did she know such
ignominy rested on her birth she would pine herself away."

"Is there only one man on earth," cried Kenelm, suddenly, rearing his
face,--till then concealed and downcast,--and with a loftiness of pride
on its aspect, new to its wonted mildness, "is there only one man who
would deem the virgin at whose feet he desires to kneel and say, 'Deign
to be the queen of my life,' not far too noble in herself to be debased
by the sins of others before she was even born; is there only one man
who does not think that the love of truth and the pride of honour are
most royal attributes of woman or of man, no matter whether the fathers
of the woman or the man were pirates as lawless as the fathers of
Norman kings, or liars as unscrupulous, where their own interests
were concerned, as have been the crowned representatives of lines as
deservedly famous as Caesars and Bourbons, Tudors and Stuarts? Nobility,
like genius, is inborn. One man alone guard _her_ secret!--guard a
secret that if made known could troubl