eyes Arabella looked, as if spellbound, and the darker and sterner
expression in her own face gradually relaxed and fled, and only the
melancholy tenderness was left behind. She resumed:

"I said to Guy Darrell that I would learn, if possible, whether the poor
child whom I ill-used in my most wicked days, and whom you, it seems,
have so benignly sheltered, was the daughter of Matilda--or, as he
believed, of a yet more hateful mother. Long ago I had conceived a
suspicion that there was some ground to doubt poor Jasper's assertion,
for I had chanced to see two letters addressed to him--one from
that Gabrielle Desinarets whose influence over his life had been so
baleful--in which she spoke of some guilty plunder with which she was
coming to London, and invited him again to join his fortunes with her
own. Oh, but the cold, bloodless villany of the tone!--the ease with
which crimes for a gibbet were treated as topics for wit!" Arabella
stopped--the same shudder came over her as when she had concluded the
epistles abstracted from the dainty pocketbook. "But in the letter were
also allusions to Sophy, to another attempt on Darrell to be made
by Gabrielle herself. Nothing very clear; but a doubt did suggest
itself--'Is she writing to him about his own child?' The other letter
was from the French nurse with whom Sophy had been placed as an infant.
It related to inquiries in person, and a visit to her own house, which
Mr. Darrell had recently made; that letter also seemed to imply some
deception, though but by a few dubious words. At that time the chief
effect of the suspicion these letters caused was but to make me more
bent on repairing to Sophy my cruelties to her childhood. What if I had
been cruel to an infant who, after all, was not the daughter of that
false, false Matilda Darrell! I kept in my memory the French nurse's
address. I thought that when in France I might seek and question her.
But I lived only for one absorbing end. Sophy was not then in danger;
and even my suspicions as to her birth died away. Pass on:--Guy Darrell!
Ah, Lady Montfort! his life has been embittered like mine; but he was
man, and could bear it better. He has known, himself, the misery of
broken faith, of betrayed affection, which he could pity so little when
its blight fell on me; but you have excuse for desertion--you yourself
were deceived; and I pardon him, for he pardoned Jasper, and we are
fellow-sufferers. You weep! Pardon my rudeness. I did