"I had you conveyed here in your sleep," he answers. "My dear, I see that you have all of woman's proverbial curiosity. But there is no mystery here. The simple truth is, that I went to Mrs. Cleveland's to seek my wife and child. I found that your mother was dead, and you were locked in a strange, narcotic sleep, almost as deep as death. I had you conveyed here, and watched over you until you awakened from your long slumber. That is all, my dear little daughter. Now, can you rest satisfied?" The dark eyes seek his, still wistfully, and with dawning tenderness. "Father, you do not know how I love the sound of your voice," she murmurs. "It does not excite nor weary me. It is full of soothing, calming power. It falls on my thirsty, yearning heart like the dew upon flowers. I wish that you would talk to me. Nothing you can say would weary me so much as my own tumultuous thoughts." He sighs, and smooths back the soft waves of gold that stray over the blue-veined temples. "What shall I talk of, little one?" he inquires. "Tell me where you have been all these long years, father, and why you never came for mamma and I when you were so unhappy?" she sighs. Tears that do not shame his manhood crowd into his dark, sad eyes. "Vera, you will hate me when I tell you that it was a mad, unreasoning jealousy, aroused and fostered by Marcia Cleveland, that led me to desert my innocent wife, and you, my little child, before you were born," he answers, heavily. Vera's dark eyes flash with ominous light. She lies silent a moment, brooding over her mother's terrible wrongs. "I have been a lonely wanderer from land to land ever since," he goes on, slowly. "God only knows what I suffered, Vera, for I could never tear the image of my wife from my breast, although I believed her false and vile. But I was too proud to go back to her. I never knew how she was breaking her heart in silent sorrow for me, her life made doubly wretched by the abuses of the false sister who hated her because I loved her. At last I was recalled from my wanderings. I had fallen heir to a title I had never dreamed of inheriting, and which only filled me with bitterness. I reflected that, but for Edith's falsity, she might have been my countess; as fair a lady as ever reigned in my ancestral halls." "Poor mamma, leading her slavish life in Mrs. Cleveland's house," the girl murmurs, in vain regret. "Poor martyr to the sins of others," the man echoes, heavily. "Yet you came back at last," Vera murmurs. "Had you repented of your hasty desertion?" "I had learned the truth, Vera, through the dying confession of Mrs. Cleveland's weak tool. I had learned how terribly I had been deceived, and that I had deserted my angel wife for naught. Vera, did she curse my memory when she lay dying of a broken heart?"