rd; and Lucretia, who had
watched him while he read, was struck with the self-control he evinced
when he came to the end of the disclosure. She laid her hand on his and
said,--

"Courage! you have lost nothing!"

"Nothing!" said Ardworth, with a bitter smile. "A father's love and a
father's name,--nothing!"

"But," exclaimed Lucretia, "is this man your father? Does a father's
heart beat in one line of those hard sentences? No, no; it seems to me
probable,--it seems to me almost certain, that you are--" She stopped,
and continued, with a calmer accent, "near to my own blood. I am now in
England, in London, to prosecute the inquiry built upon that hope. If
so, if so, you shall--" Madame Dalibard again stopped abruptly, and
there was something terrible in the very exultation of her countenance.
She drew a long breath, and resumed, with an evident effort at
self-command, "If so, I have a right to the interest I feel for
you. Suffer me yet to be silent as to the grounds of my belief,
and--and--love me a little in the mean while!"

Her voice trembled, as if with rushing tears, at these last words, and
there was almost an agony in the tone in which they were said, and in
the gesture of the clasped hands she held out to him.

Much moved (amidst all his mingled emotions at the tale thus made known
to him) by the manner and voice of the narrator, Ardworth bent down and
kissed the extended hands. Then he rose abruptly, walked to and fro the
room, muttering to himself, paused opposite the window, threw it open,
as for air, and, indeed, fairly gasped for breath. When he turned round,
however, his face was composed, and folding his arms on his large breast
with a sudden action, he said aloud, and yet rather to himself than to
his listener,--

"What matter, after all, by what name men call our fathers? We
ourselves make our own fate! Bastard or noble, not a jot care I. Give me
ancestors, I will not disgrace them; raze from my lot even the very name
of father, and my sons shall have an ancestor in me!"

As he thus spoke, there was a rough grandeur in his hard face and the
strong ease of his powerful form. And while thus standing and thus
looking, the door opened, and Varney walked in abruptly.

These two men had met occasionally at Madame Dalibard's, but no intimacy
had been established between them. Varney was formal and distant to
Ardworth, and Ardworth felt a repugnance to Varney. With the instinct
of sound, sterling, weig