"Dear child, your secret is ours!" he said, quietly. "Miss Leigh knows, and _I_ know that you are the daughter of Pierce Armitage, and that your mother was my late wife. No one can be dearer to us both than you are--for your father's sake!" CHAPTER VII Startled and completely taken aback, she let her hands remain passively in his for a moment,--then quietly withdrew them. A hot colour rushed swiftly into her cheeks and as swiftly receded, leaving her very pale. "How can you know?" she faltered--"Who has told you?" "Your mother herself told me on the night she died," he answered--"She gave me all the truth of herself,--at last--after long years!" She was silent--standing inert as though she had received a numbing blow. Miss Leigh rose and came tremblingly towards her. "My dear, my dear!" she exclaimed--"I wish I had known it all before!--I might have done more--I might have tried to be kinder--" The girl sprang to her side and impulsively embraced her. "You would have tried in vain!" she said, fondly, "No one on earth could have been kinder than my beloved little godmother! You have been the dearest and best of friends!" Then she turned towards Lord Blythe. "It is very good of you to come here and say what you have said"--and she spoke in soft, almost pathetic accents--"But I am sorry that anyone knows my story--it is no use to know it, really! I should have always kept it a secret--for it chiefly concerns me, after all,--and why should my existence cast a shadow on the memory of my father? Perhaps you may have known him--" "I knew him and loved him!" said Lord Blythe, quickly. She looked at him with wistful, tear-wet eyes. "Well then, how hard it must be for you to think that he ever did anything unworthy of himself!" she said--"And for this dear lady it is cruel!--for she loved him too. And what am I that I should cause all this trouble! I am a nameless creature--I took his name because I wanted to kindle a little light of my own round it--I have done that! And then I wanted to guard his memory from any whisper of scandal--will you help me in this? The secret must still be kept--and no one must ever know I am his daughter. For though your wife is dead her name must not be shamed for the long ago sin of her youth--nor must I be branded as what I am--base-born." Profoundly touched by the simple straightforward eloquence of her appeal, Lord Blythe went up to her where she stood with one arm round Miss Leigh.