“I am a very happy man, Rosa, compared with what I was before you told me this strange story.  But I am very serious, because I want to be sure of doing what is right in these difficult premises.  As for Gerald and Eulalia, their acquaintance has been very short, and I don’t think they have spoken of love to each other.  Their extreme youth is also a favorable circumstance.  Rochefoucault says, ’Absence extinguishes small passions, and increases great ones.’  My own experience proved the truth of one part of the maxim; but perhaps Gerald is of a more volatile temperament, and will realize the other portion.”

“And do you still love me as well as you ever did?” she asked.

He folded her more closely as he whispered, “I do, darling.”  And for some minutes she wept in silence on his generous breast.

CHAPTER XXXI.

That evening young Fitzgerald was closeted two or three hours with Mr. King.  Though the disclosure was made with the utmost delicacy and caution, the young man was startled and shocked; for he inherited pride from both his parents, and he had been educated in the prejudices of his grandfather.  At first he flushed with indignation, and refused to believe he was so disgraced.

“I don’t see that you are disgraced, my young friend,” replied Mr. King.  “The world might indeed so misjudge, because it is accustomed to look only on externals; but there is no need that the world should know anything about it.  And as for your own estimate of yourself, you were Mr. Fitzgerald the gentleman before you knew this singular story, and you are Mr. Fitzgerald the gentleman still.”

“I am not so much of a philosopher,” rejoined the young man.  “I shall not find it easy to endure the double stain of illegitimacy and alliance with the colored race.”

Mr. King regarded him with a friendly smile, as he answered:  “Perhaps this experience, which you find so disagreeable, may educate you to more wisdom than the schools have done.  It may teach you the great lesson of looking beneath the surface into the reality of things, my son.  Legally you are illegitimate; but morally you are not so.  Your mother believed herself married to your father, and through all the vicissitudes of her life she has proved herself a modest, pure, and noble woman.  During twenty years of intimate acquaintance, I have never known her to indulge an unworthy thought, or do a dishonorable action, except that of substituting you for Mr. Fitzgerald’s legal heir.  And if I have at all succeeded in impressing upon your mind the frantic agony of her soul, desolate and shockingly abused as she was, I think you will agree with me in considering that an excusable offence; especially as she would have repaired the wrong a few hours later, if it had been in her power.  With regard to an alliance with the colored race, I think it would be a more legitimate source of pride to have descended