‘Yes. In me you behold the wreck of Stephen Malcolm.’ ‘You Laura’s father! Great heaven! Why, you have not a feature, not a look in common with her! Her father! This is indeed a revelation.’ ‘Your astonishment is not flattering to me. My child resembles her mother, who was one of the loveliest women I ever saw. Yet I can assure you, Mr. Treverton, that at your age, Stephen Malcolm had some pretension to good looks.’ ‘I am not disputing that, man. You may have been as handsome as Adonis; but my Laura’s father should have at least something of her look and air; a smile, a glance, a turn of the head, a something that would reveal the mystic link between parent and child. Does she know this? Does she recognise you as her father?’ ‘She does, poor child. It is at her wish I have revealed myself to you.’ ‘How long has she known?’ ‘It is a little more than five years since I told her. I had just returned from the Continent, where I had spent seven years of my life in self-imposed exile. Suddenly I was seized with the outcast’s yearning to tread his native soil again, and look upon the scenes of youth once more before death closes his eyes for ever. I came back--could not resist the impulse that drew me to my daughter--put myself one day in her pathway, and told her my story. From that time I have seen her at intervals.’ ‘And have received money from her,’ put in John Treverton. ‘She is rich and I am poor. She has helped me to live.’ ‘You might have lived upon the money she gave you a little more reputably than you were living in Cibber Street, when we were fellow-lodgers.’ ‘What were my vices in Cibber Street? My life was inoffensive.’ ‘Late hours and the brandy bottle--the ruin of body and soul.’ ‘I have a chronic malady which makes brandy a necessity for me.’ ‘Would it not be more exact to say that brandy is your chronic malady? Well, Mr. Mansfield, I shall make a proposition to you in the character of your son-in-law.’ ‘I have a few words to say to you before you make it. I have told you my secret, which all the world may know, and welcome. I have committed no crime in allowing my old friend to suppose me dead. I have only sacrificed my own interests to the advantage of my daughter; but you, Mr. Treverton, have your secret, and one which I think you would hardly like to lay bare to the world in which you are now such an important personage. The master of Hazlehurst Manor would scarcely care to be identified with Jack Chicot, the caricaturist, and husband--at least by common repute--of the dancer whose name used to adorn all the walls of London.’