e, disgust, and terror, occasioned by her hideous conduct,
repressed those bursts of despairing tenderness I can no longer restrain
in your sympathising presence, my faithful friend. I fear not to indulge
the natural emotions of my heart, and my hitherto pent-up tears may now
freely vent themselves. Forgive my weakness, and excuse my thus cowardly
shrinking from the trial I am called upon to endure, but it seems to
have riven my very heart-strings, and to have left me feeble as an
infant! Oh, my child! My loved, my lost child! Long must these scalding
tears flow ere I can forget you!"

"Ah, my lord, weep on, for your loss is indeed irreparable!"

"What joy to have atoned to her for all the wretchedness with which her
young days have been clouded! What bliss to have unfolded to her the
happy destiny that was to recompense her for all her past sorrows! And,
then, I should have used so much care and precaution in opening her eyes
to the brilliant lot that was to succeed her miserable youth, for the
tale, if told too abruptly, might have been too much for her delicate
nerves to sustain; but, no, I would by degrees have revealed to her the
history of her birth, and prepared her to receive me as her father!"

Then, again bursting into an agony of despair, Rodolph continued: "But
what avails all that I would have done, when I am tortured by the cruel
reflection that, when I had my child all to myself during the ill-fated
day I conducted her to the farm, when she so innocently displayed the
rich treasures of her pure and heavenly nature, no secret voice
whispered to me that in her I beheld my cherished and lamented daughter?
I might have prevented this dreadful calamity by keeping her with me
instead of sending her to Madame Georges. Oh, if I had, I should have
been spared my present sufferings, and needed only to have opened my
arms and folded her to my heart as my newly found treasure,--more really
great and noble by the beauty of her heart and mind, and perhaps more
worthy to fill the station to which I should raise her, than if she had
always been reared in opulence and with a knowledge of her rank! I alone
am to blame for her death; but mine is an accursed existence. I seem
fated to trample on every duty,--a bad son and a bad father!"

Murphy felt that grief such as Rodolph's admitted of no ordinary
consolation. He did not therefore attempt to interrupt its violence by
any hackneyed phrases or promises of comfort he well