She needed no more words than these. In an instant she saw it all; and though bewildered, she did not for a moment doubt his words. But her whole being was overwhelmed by a sudden and a sharp agony of remorse; for she had accustomed herself to hate this man, and the irrepressible tokens of a father's love she had regarded as hypocrisy. She had never failed to heap upon that reverend head the deepest scorn, contumely, and insult. But a moment before she had hurled at him a terrible accusation. At him! At whom? At the man whose mournful destiny it had been all along to suffer for the sins of others; and she it was who had flung upon him an additional burden of grief. But with all her remorse there were other feelings--a shrinking sense of terror, a recoil from this sudden discovery as from something abhorrent. This her father! That father's face and form had been stamped in her memory. For years, as she had lived in the hope of seeing him, she had quickened her love for him and fed her hopes from his portrait. But how different was this one! What a frightful change from the father that lived in her memory! The one was a young man in the flush and pride of life and strength--the other a woe-worn, grief-stricken sufferer, with reverend head, bowed form, and trembling limbs. Besides, she had long regarded him as dead; and to see this man was like looking on one who had risen from the dead. In an instant, however, all was plain, and together with the discovery there came the pangs of remorse and terror and anguish. She could understand all. He, the escaped convict, had come to England, and was supposed to be dead. He had lived, under a false name, a life of constant and vigilant terror. He kept his secret from all the world. Oh, if he had only told her! Now the letter of Miss Plympton was all plain, and she wondered how she had been so blind. “Oh!” she moaned, in a scarce audible voice, “why did you not tell me?” “Oh, Edith darling! my child! my only love!” murmured Frederick Dalton, bending low over her, and infolding her trembling frame in his own trembling arms; “my sweet daughter, if you could only have known how I yearned over you! But I delayed to tell you. It was the one sweet hope of my life to redeem my name from its foul stain, and then declare myself. I wanted you to get your father back as he had left you, without this abhorrent crime laid to his charge. I did wrong not to trust you. It was a bitter, bitter error. But I had so set my heart on it. It was all for your sake, Edith--all, darling, for your sake!”