is wholly strange. She breaks the seal, and reads:--

"MY DARLING GERTRUDE,--My much-loved child--for such you indeed
are, though a father's agony of fear and despair alone wrung from
me the words that claimed you. It was no madness that, in the dark
hour of danger, compelled me to clasp you to my heart, and call you
mine. A dozen times before had I been seized by the same emotion,
and as often had it been subdued and smothered. And even now I
would crush the promptings of nature, and depart and weep my poor
life away alone; but the voice within me has spoken once, and
cannot again be silenced. Had I seen you happy, gay, and
light-hearted, I would not have asked to share your joy, far less
would I have cast a shadow on your path; but you are sad and
troubled, my poor child, and your grief unites the tie between us
closer than that of kindred, and makes you a thousand times my
daughter; for I am a wretched, weary man, and know how to feel for
others' woe.

"You have a kind and a gentle heart, my child. You have wept once
for the stranger's sorrows--will you now refuse to pity, if you
cannot love, the solitary parent, who, with a breaking heart and a
trembling hand, writes the ill-fated word that dooms him, perhaps,
to the hatred and contempt of the only being on earth with whom he
can claim the fellowship of a natural tie? Twice before have I
striven to utter it, and, laying down my pen, have shrunk from the
cruel task. But, hard as it is to speak, I find it harder to still
the beating of my restless heart; therefore, listen to me, though
it may be for the last time. Is there one being on earth whom you
shudder to think of? Is there one associated only in your mind with
deeds of darkness and of shame? Is there one name which you have
from your childhood learned to abhor and hate; and, in proportion
as you love your best friend, have you been taught to shrink from
and despise her worst enemy? It cannot be otherwise. Ah! I tremble
to think how my child will recoil from her father when she learns
the secret, so long preserved, so sorrowfully revealed, that he is

"PHILLIP AMORY!"

As Gertrude finished reading this strange and unintelligible letter her
countenance expressed complete bewilderment--her eyes glistened with
tears, her face was flushed with excit