“I have not much more to say. I thought your own fatherly instinct would have assisted me. Do you remember that you left me in charge of your child after Mrs. Tallant’s death? You were so stricken with grief that you never saw the child but once; and when the poor lady was buried you travelled on the Continent for more than six months. I had an infant two months old when your child was born. You left your house and child in my care. I was to do everything that was right and proper under the circumstances. Do you remember?” The woman grew very much excited, and would not be content with Mr. Tallant’s solemn nod in the affirmative. “Do you remember?” she repeated. “I do,” he said. “Do you remember, when you returned home, that you came of your own accord and asked to see the child, and how you called it Phœbe, after its mother--do you remember?” “Yes, most assuredly,” said the merchant. “That child was my own child. I changed them before you had been gone a month.” Here she paused to see what effect the revelation had upon her hearer. But she could glean nothing from Mr. Tallant’s solemn, passive face. “Amy Somerton is your daughter, and the young lady called Phœbe Tallant is mine.” She went on--“And now I can die in peace. It was all ambition. I thought to be somebody through the means of my child; it was not all for her own sake that I did it. I thought of it night and day before I did it--night and day, and day and night, and I changed my mind many a time, until at last Luke, my husband, became accustomed to the new face, and then I could not go back from my purpose. And yet all my plans fail, everything goes wrong, and this secret has burnt into my life like a red-hot coal, until I am dying of it--dying of it.” Then she sank back exhausted, and the merchant sat by with his eyes fixed upon her face, but without making the slightest effort to give her any assistance. He was a good deal stunned by the woman’s revelation; but if all other things had been well, he could have borne it without scarcely a pang either of indignation or regret, for both girls had been well cared for. They had lived like sisters, now for a long time past, and Amy had picked up an education almost equal to Phœbe’s. “What proof have you of this base and ungrateful fraud?” he asked, when the woman opened her eyes again. “Look at the picture of your wife--the one which hangs in the library--and then tell me how it is that you have not found out the deception long ago. Amy grows more like the lady who is gone every day, and Phœbe has not a feature in her face to remind you of her.”