"Do you mean to tell me," he asked, "that she has been kept In complete
ignorance of her history all these years?"
"She has been brought up in the belief that she is my daughter," said
Margaret--"she knows nothing else."
A dark frown came over the earl's face.
"It was wickedly unjust," he said--"cruelly unjust. Let me go to her at
once,"
Pale, trembling, and frightened, Margaret led the way. It seemed to the
earl that his heart had stopped beating, and a thick mist was spread
before his eyes, that the surging of a deep sea filled his ears. Oh,
Heaven, could it be that after all these years he was really going to
see Madaline's child, his own lost daughter? Very soon he found himself
looking on a fair face framed in golden hair, with dark blue eyes, full
of passion, poetry, and sorrow, sweet crimson lips, sensitive, and
delicate, a face so lovely that its pure, saint-like expression almost
frightened him. He looked at it in a passion of wonder and grief of love
and longing; and then he saw a shadow of fear gradually darken the
beautiful eyes.
"Madaline," he said gently; and she looked at him in wonder "Madaline,"
he repeated.
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