self.

"She replied to my queries as coolly as she had done during the day to
some dozen of the doctor's disappointed patients--telling me that he had
left that morning for New York, and would not be back for two or three
weeks. Nothing could have been more favourable to my wishes than the
chance thus afforded of overtaking your party and, as a travelling
companion, introducing myself gradually to your notice.

"You know how this purpose was effected; how, now in the rear, and now
in advance, I nevertheless maintained a constant proximity to your
footsteps. To add to the comfort of yourself and Emily, to learn your
plans, forestall your wishes, secure to your use the best of rooms, and
bribe to your service the most devoted of attendants--I spared neither
pains, trouble, nor expense. For much of the freedom with which I
approached you and made myself an occasional member of your circle, I
was indebted to Emily's blindness; for I could not doubt that otherwise
time and its changes would fail to conceal from her my identity, and I
should meet with a premature recognition. Nor until the final act of
the drama, when death stared us all in the face, and concealment became
impossible, did I once trust my voice to her hearing.

"How closely, during those few weeks, I watched and weighed your every
word and action, seeking even to read your thoughts in your face, none
can tell whose acuteness is not sharpened and vivified by motives so
all-engrossing as mine; and who can measure the anguish of the fond
father who day by day learned to worship his child with a more absorbing
idolatry, and yet dared not clasp her to his heart?

"Especially when I saw you the victim of grief and trouble did I long to
assert a claim to your confidence; and more than once my self-control
would have given way but for the dread inspired by the gentle
Emily--gentle to all but me. I could not brook the thought that with my
confession I should cease to be the trusted friend and become the
abhorred parent. I preferred to maintain my distant and unacknowledged
guardianship of my child rather than that she should behold in me the
dreaded tyrant who might tear her from the home from which he himself
had been driven.

"And so I kept silent; and sometimes present to your sight, but still
oftener hid from view, I hovered around your path until that dreadful
day, which you will long remember, when, everything forgotten but the
safety of yourself and Emily,