“Tell me,” he said, stopping abruptly, and looking at Margaret “you saw my poor wife when she lay dead—­is my child like her?”

Margaret answered quickly.

“She is like her; but, to my mind, she is a thousand times fairer.”

They reached the principal hotel at Lynton, and Lord Mountdean called hastily for a carriage.  Not a moment was to be lost—­time pressed.

“You know the way,” he said to Margaret, “will you direct the driver?”

He did not think to ask where his daughter lived, if she was married or single, what she was doing or anything else; his one thought was that he had found her—­found her, never to lose her again.

He sat with his face shaded by his hand during the whole of the drive, thanking Heaven that he had found Madaline’s child.  He never noticed the woods, the high-road bordered with trees, the carriage-drive with its avenue of chestnuts; he did not even recognize the picturesque, quaint old Dower House that he had admired so greatly some little time before.  He saw a large mansion, but it never occurred to him to ask whether his daughter was mistress or servant; he only knew that the carriage had stopped, and that very shortly he should see his child.

Presently he found himself in a large hall gay with flowers and covered with Indian matting, and Margaret Dornham was trembling before him.

“My lord,” she said, “your daughter is ill, and I am afraid the agitation may prove too much for her.  Tell me, what shall I do?”

He collected his scattered thoughts.

“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.

“I—­I—­do not know you,” she replied, surprised.

She was lying, when he entered the room, on a little couch drawn close to the window, the sunlight, which fell full upon her, lighting up the golden hair and refined face with unearthly beauty.  When he uttered her name, she stood up, and so like her mother did she appear that it was with difficulty he could refrain from clasping her in his arms.  But he must not startle her, he reflected—­he saw how fragile she was.