No matter how strong the proof!" she repeated. "Ah! There it is
again. You quietly assume my papa's guilt in every word. You have
read those papers, and have believed every word."

"You are very unkind, Zillah. I was doing my best to comfort you."

"Comfort!" cried Zillah, in indescribable tones.

"Ah, my darling, do not be cross," said Hilda, twining her arms
around Zillah's neck. "You know I loved your papa only less than you
did. He was a father to me. What can I say? You yourself were
troubled by those papers. So was I. And that is all I will say. I
will not speak of them again."

And here Hilda stopped, and went about the room to attend to her
duties as nurse. Zillah stood, with her mind full of strange,
conflicting feelings. The hints which Hilda had given sank deep into
her soul. What did they mean? Their frightful meaning stood revealed
full before her in all its abhorrent reality.

Reviewing those papers by the light of Hilda's dark interpretation,
she saw what they involved. This, then, was the cause of her
marriage. Her father had tried to atone for the past. He had made
Lord Chetwynde rich to pay for the dishonor that he had suffered. He
had stolen away the wife, and given a daughter in her place. She,
then, had been the medium of this frightful attempt at readjustment,
this atonement for wrongs that could never be atoned for. Hilda's
meaning made this the only conceivable cause for that premature
engagement, that hurried marriage by the death-bed. And could there
be any other reason? Did it not look like the act of a remorseful
sinner, anxious to finish his expiation, and make amends for crime
before meeting his Judge in the other world to which he was
hastening? The General had offered up every thing to expiate his
crime--he had given his fortune--he had sacrificed his daughter. What
other cause could possibly have moved him to enforce the hideous
mockery of that ghastly, that unparalleled marriage?

Beneath such intolerable thoughts as these, Zillah's brain whirled.
She could not avoid them. Affection, loyalty, honor--all bade her
trust in her father; the remembrance of his noble character, of his
stainless life, his pure and gentle nature, all recurred. In vain.
Still the dark suspicion insidiously conveyed by Hilda would obtrude;
and, indeed, under such circumstances, Zillah would have been more
than human if they had not come forth before her. As it was, she was
only human and young and inexperi