"Lord Ashiel--my father--was waiting for me, and he came to meet me and kissed me tenderly. We were both very much agitated: I was still feeling the effects of my escape from drowning, and he, poor dear, was weak and ill. In short, neither of us was in a fit state to meet the situation calmly; and, if my tears flowed, they were not the only ones that were shed. For a few moments we cried like babies, in each other's arms, and then I pulled myself together, for I knew how bad it was for his health to get into this nervous state. Mr. Gimblet, I needn't tell you all the conversation that followed between us. He told me that you know the whole story, that you are the one person in the world in whom he had confided; so it is unnecessary for me to repeat what he said of his marriage to my mother, of her death, and of his resolve never willingly to look upon me, the baby who had taken her from him. He told me also of the years that had intervened between that day when he had shuffled off his responsibilities on to Mrs. Meredith, and the day, not long ago, when he at last decided to hunt out his daughter. "He told me of his fears that she should prove to be none other than Julia Romaninov, and of how, in desperation, he had applied to you for help, and of how you had discovered my existence. "He said he had never really doubted from the moment he first set eyes on me that I was Juliana's child. But he dared not hint such a thing to me till he was certain, and anxious though he was to see a likeness between me and her, or himself, he had not been able to tell himself, truthfully, that he could really see one, until that day. It was when I was brought home that afternoon, so white and faint, so changed by my pallor from what he chose to describe as my usual gay brilliance, that the resemblance suddenly showed itself. He hardly knew that it was I; it might have been Juliana that they were carrying. He said there could be no doubt that I was her daughter; that he for one, required no further proof; though we should probably get it now it was no longer wanted. Sir Arthur Byrne might be able to suggest some way of tracing things. Not that it mattered, for he could not in any case leave me his title, and, on the other hand, he had full control of his money, which would be mine before very long.