since I could creep--I never knew any father or mother." She stopped, hoping perhaps he would say some little word, that he would even pat her head, or press her hand, but he sat like one stunned. "If it could have been anything but this!" she pleaded, low and sorrowfully. "Oh, why did you not listen to me before we were engulfed! My dear Henry! You who've given me all the happiness I have ever had--that the blood of my own should come against you and yours!" The emotion she struggled with, and fought back with all the strength of her nature, rose in a resistless tide that swept her on, in the face of his ominous silence, to despair. She clasped her hands in silent misery, losing hope with every moment of his stoniness that she could move him to restraint or pity toward her wretched foster-father. She recalled the merciless words he had spoken on the mountain when he told her of his father's death. Her tortured imagination pictured the horror of the sequel, in which the son of the murdered man should meet him who had taken his father's life. The fate of it, the hopelessness of escape from its awful consequence, overcame her. Her breath, no longer controlled, came brokenly, and her voice trembled. "You have been very kind to me, Henry--you've been the only man I've ever known that always, everywhere, thought of me first. I told you I didn't deserve it, I wasn't worthy of it----" His hands slipped silently over her hands. He gathered her close into his arms, and his tears fell on her upturned face. CHAPTER XXX HOPE FORLORN There were hours in that night that each had reason long to remember; a night that seemed to bring them, in spite of their devotion, to the end of their dream. They parted late, each trying to soften the blow as it fell on the other, each professing a courage which, in the face of the revelation, neither could clearly feel. In the morning Jeffries brought down to de Spain, who had spent a sleepless night at the office, a letter from Nan. De Spain opened it with acute misgivings. Hardly able to believe his eyes, he slowly read: DEAREST: A wild hope has come to me. Perhaps we don't know the truth of this terrible story as it really is. Suppose we should be condemning poor Uncle Duke without having the real facts? Sassoon was a wretch, Henry, if ever one lived--a curse to every one. What purpose he could serve by repeating this story, which he must have kept very secret till now, I don't know; but there was some reason. I _must_ know the whole truth--I feel that I, alone, can get hold of it, and that you would approve what I am doing if you were here with me in this little room, where I am writing at daybreak, to show you my heart.