"Oh! are you quite sure?" "Perfectly sure. I have been hunting him for years, and at last have obtained in black and white his own confession, which nobly exonerates your mother from his infamous aspirations." "Thank God! Thank God!" Tears were stealing down her cheeks, and he saw from the twitching of her face that she was fast losing control of her overtaxed nerves. "You must go to your room and rest, or you will be ill." "Oh! not if I am sure he will never dare to claim me as his child. Oh, Mr. Palma! that possibility has almost driven me wild." "Dismiss it as you would some hideous nightmare. Go to sleep and dream of your mother, and of----" He bit his lip to check the rash words, and too much agitated to observe his changed manner, she asked: "Where is he now?" "No matter where. He is so completely in my power, that he can trouble us no more." She clasped her hands joyfully, but the tears fell faster, and looking at her mother's picture, she exclaimed: "Have mercy upon me, Mr. Palma! Tell me--do you know--whom I am? Do you really know beyond doubt who was--or is--my father?" "This much I can tell you, I know your father's name; but just now I am forbidden by your mother to disclose it, even to you. Come to your room." He raised her from the chair, and as she stood before him, it was pitiable to witness the agonized entreaty in her pallid but beautiful face. "Please tell me only one thing, and I can bear all else patiently. Was he--was my father--a gentleman? Oh! my mother could never have loved any--but a gentleman." "His treatment of her and of you would scarcely entitle him to that honourable epithet; yet in the eyes of the world your father assuredly is in every respect a gentleman, is considered even an aristocrat." She sobbed aloud, and the violence of her emotion, which she seemed unable to control, alarmed him. Leading her to the library door he said, retaining her hand. "Compose yourself, or you will be really sick. Now that your poor tortured heart is easy, can you not go to sleep?" "Oh, thank you! Yes, I will try." "Lily, next time trust me. Trust your guardian in everything. Good-night. God bless you." CHAPTER XXV. "'The dice of the gods are always loaded,' and what appears the merest chance is as inexorably fixed, predetermined, as the rules of mathematics, or the laws of crystallization. What madness to flout fate!" Mrs. Orme laid down her pen as she spoke, and leaned back in her chair. "Did you speak to me?" inquired Mrs. Waul, who had been nodding over her worsted work, and was aroused by the sound of the voice. "No, I was merely thinking aloud; a foolish habit I have contracted since I began to aspire to literary laurels. Go to sleep again, and finish your dream." Upon the writing desk lay a _MS_. in morocco cover, and secured by heavy bronze clasps, into which the owner put a small key attached to her watch chain, carefully locking and laying it away in a drawer of the desk.