‘Know it!’ exclaimed Venetia with astonishment.  ’Who could have told you the secret?’

‘It is no secret,’ replied Cadurcis; ‘would that it were!’

’Would that it were!  How strange you speak, how strange you look, Plantagenet!  If it be no secret that I have a father, why this concealment then?  I know that I am not the child of shame!’ she added, after a moment’s pause, with an air of pride.  A tear stole down the cheek of Cadurcis.

’Plantagenet! dear, good Plantagenet! my brother! my own brother! see, I kneel to you; Venetia kneels to you! your own Venetia!  Venetia that you love!  Oh! if you knew the load that is on my spirit bearing me down to a grave which I would almost welcome, you would speak to me; you would tell me all.  I have sighed for this; I have longed for this; I have prayed for this.  To meet some one who would speak to me of my father; who had heard of him, who knew him; has been for years the only thought of my being, the only object for which I existed.  And now, here comes Plantagenet, my brother! my own brother! and he knows all, and he will tell me; yes, that he will; he will tell his Venetia all, all!’

‘Is there not your mother?’ said Lord Cadurcis, in a broken tone.

’Forbidden, utterly forbidden.  If I speak, they tell me her heart will break; and therefore mine is breaking.’

‘Have you no friend?’

‘Are not you my friend?’

‘Doctor Masham?’

’I have applied to him; he tells me that he lives, and then he shakes his head.’

‘You never saw your father; think not of him.’

‘Not think of him!’ exclaimed Venetia, with extraordinary energy.  ’Of what else?  For what do I live but to think of him?  What object have I in life but to see him?  I have seen him, once.’

‘Ah!’

’I know his form by heart, and yet it was but a shade.  Oh, what a shade! what a glorious, what an immortal shade!  If gods were upon earth they would be like my father!’

‘His deeds, at least, are not godlike,’ observed Lord Cadurcis dryly, and with some bitterness.

‘I deny it!’ said Venetia, her eyes sparkling with fire, her form dilated with enthusiasm, and involuntarily withdrawing her arm from her companion.  Lord Cadurcis looked exceedingly astonished.

‘You deny it!’ he exclaimed.  ‘And what should you know about it?’

’Nature whispers to me that nothing but what is grand and noble could be breathed by those lips, or fulfilled by that form.’

‘I am glad you have not read his works,’ said Lord Cadurcis, with increased bitterness.  ’As for his conduct, your mother is a living evidence of his honour, his generosity, and his virtue.’

‘My mother!’ said Venetia, in a softened voice; ’and yet he loved my mother!’

‘She was his victim, as a thousand others may have been.’

‘She is his wife!’ replied Venetia, with some anxiety.