Venetia uttered a faint cry, she clenched her mother’s hand with a convulsive grasp, and sank upon her bosom.  She struggled to maintain herself, but the first sound of that name from her mother’s lips, and all the long-suppressed emotions that it conjured up, overpowered her.  The blood seemed to desert her heart; still she did not faint; she clung to Lady Annabel, pallid and shivering.

Her mother tenderly embraced her, she whispered to her words of great affection, she attempted to comfort and console her.  Venetia murmured, ’This is very foolish of me, mother; but speak, oh! speak of what I have so long desired to hear.’

‘Not now, Venetia.’

’Now, mother! yes, now!  I am quite composed.  I could not bear the postponement of what you were about to say.  I could not sleep, dear mother, if you did not speak to me.  It was only for a moment I was overcome.  See!  I am quite composed.’  And indeed she spoke in a calm and steady voice, but her pale and suffering countenance expressed the painful struggle which it cost her to command herself.

‘Venetia,’ said Lady Annabel, ’it has been one of the objects of my life, that you should not share my sorrows.’

Venetia pressed her mother’s hand, but made no other reply.

‘I concealed from you for years,’ continued Lady Annabel, ’a circumstance in which, indeed, you were deeply interested, but the knowledge of which could only bring you unhappiness.  Yet it was destined that my solicitude should eventually be baffled.  I know that it is not from my lips that you learn for the first time that you have a father, a father living.’

‘Mother, let me tell you all!’ said Venetia, eagerly.

‘I know all,’ said Lady Annabel.

’But, mother, there is something that you do not know; and now I would confess it.’

’There is nothing that you can confess with which I am not acquainted, Venetia; and I feel assured, I have ever felt assured, that your only reason for concealment was a desire to save me pain.’

‘That, indeed, has ever been my only motive,’ replied Venetia, ’for having a secret from my mother.’

‘In my absence from Cherbury you entered the chamber,’ said Lady Annabel, calmly.  ’In the delirium of your fever I became acquainted with a circumstance which so nearly proved fatal to you.’

Venetia’s cheek turned scarlet.

‘In that chamber you beheld the portrait of your father,’ continued Lady Annabel.  ’From our friend you learnt that father was still living.  That is all?’ said Lady Annabel, inquiringly.

’No, not all, dear mother; not all.  Lord Cadurcis reproached me at Cherbury with, with, with having such a father,’ she added, in a hesitating voice.  ’It was then I learnt his misfortunes, mother; his misery.’

’I thought that misfortunes, that misery, were the lot of your other parent,’ replied Lady Annabel, somewhat coldly.