eping when you were once at Marringhurst. You told me
of it.'

'Ay, ay!'

'There is a wing of our house shut up. We often talked of it.'

'Often, Venetia; it was a mystery.'

'I have penetrated it,' replied Venetia in a solemn tone; 'and never
have I known what happiness is since.'

'Yes, yes!' said Lord Cadurcis, very pale, and in a whisper.

'Plantagenet, I have a father.'

Lord Cadurcis started, and for an instant his arm quitted Venetia's.
At length he said in a gloomy voice, 'I know it.'

'Know it!' exclaimed Venetia with astonishment. 'Who could have told
you the secret?'

'It is no secret,' replied Cadurcis; 'would that it were!'

'Would that it were! How strange you speak, how strange you look,
Plantagenet! If it be no secret that I have a father, why this
concealment then? I know that I am not the child of shame!' she added,
after a moment's pause, with an air of pride. A tear stole down the
cheek of Cadurcis.

'Plantagenet! dear, good Plantagenet! my brother! my own brother! see,
I kneel to you; Venetia kneels to you! your own Venetia! Venetia that
you love! Oh! if you knew the load that is on my spirit bearing me
down to a grave which I would almost welcome, you would speak to me;
you would tell me all. I have sighed for this; I have longed for this;
I have prayed for this. To meet some one who would speak to me of my
father; who had heard of him, who knew him; has been for years the
only thought of my being, the only object for which I existed. And
now, here comes Plantagenet, my brother! my own brother! and he knows
all, and he will tell me; yes, that he will; he will tell his Venetia
all, all!'

'Is there not your mother?' said Lord Cadurcis, in a broken tone.

'Forbidden, utterly forbidden. If I speak, they tell me her heart will
break; and therefore mine is breaking.'

'Have you no friend?'

'Are not you my friend?'

'Doctor Masham?'

'I have applied to him; he tells me that he lives, and then he shakes
his head.'

'You never saw your father; think not of him.'

'Not think of him!' exclaimed Venetia, with extraordinary energy. 'Of
what else? For what do I live but to think of him? What object have I
in life but to see him? I have seen him, once.'

'Ah!'

'I know his form by heart, and yet it was but a shade. Oh, what a
shade! what a glorious, what an immortal shade! If gods were upon
earth they would be like my father!'

'His deeds, at least, are not godlike,' observed Lord