across his forehead once or
twice, as if to sweep away some pain that ached there, "I am at a loss
what to say!"

Ralph turned white and drew back.

"No, no, it is not as you think. The sweet girl is blameless as the
angels, but she is bound by promises and obligations that even I cannot
feel free to fling aside: yet this secrecy can only end in pain. It is
my duty, at any risk, to free her name from reproach. Ralph, I have
something very distressing to tell you, and it must be told."

"If Lina is innocent, if she loves me, all else is nothing!" answered
Ralph, with enthusiasm. "Oh, James, you have made a man of me once
more!"

"This hopefulness pains me, Ralph."

"How? Did you not charge me to keep hopeful? did you not tell me that
Lina was blameless? While I can respect, love--nay, adore her--what else
has the power to wound me?"

James Harrington shrank back, and his face flushed.

"Hush! hush! these words are too ardent--they wound, they repulse me! If
you guessed all that I know, your own heart would recoil from them."

"Guessed all that you know!--well, speak out. It must be something
terrible, indeed, if it prevents me loving her, after what you have
already said."

James Harrington hesitated; looked wistfully at the eager face turned
full of inquiry to his, and at last said, in a low, almost solemn voice:

"Ralph, Lina is your father's daughter."

"My father's daughter?" cried Ralph, aghast; "my father's daughter!"

"He told her so with his own lips, binding her by a promise not to
reveal the secret to us. Poor thing, it was too weighty for her
strength; she grew wild under it and fled to the woman you saw, who
claims to be her mother."

"Claims to be her mother! That woman--it is false!"

"I fear not, Ralph! I myself recognized that woman as a beautiful slave
whom your father owned when my own poor mother died. She has changed
but"----

"A slave--Lina, the child of a slave? I tell you it is false; the dews
of heaven are not more pure than the blood that fills those blue veins;
there is some fraud here!" cried Ralph, impetuously.

"I fear not. She is certain of it; this cruel conviction is killing her.
But for her feeble state, I never could have won her secret. Poor child,
poor child, what can be done for her?"

Ralph walked the room impetuously, beating the air with his hand: all at
once he stopped--the cloud upon his brow cleared away--his lips parted
almost with a cry.

"I tell you, b