I thought as I watched him that if Winifred so closely resembled her dead mother, she was also like her father. His face was as mobile and expressive as hers, allowing always for the mask which the years are sure to put over every human countenance.
"You fancy there is a resemblance in this girl to your dead wife?"
"I know there is a resemblance to Winifred's dead mother," he answered.
I was silent though I had little reason for concealment henceforth.
"How cruel you have been all this time," he exclaimed, as he watched me; "I think it comes natural to your sex."
"Don't revile our sex for the faults of your own," I answered. "But tell me more about your dead wife."
His face changed and softened. Then a look came over it--a look of tender remembrance, which did him credit.
"She was very beautiful," he began, "at least I thought so. I met her when she was only fifteen. She was the image of what Winifred is now, only her beauty was more pronounced, and she had a haughtier air. I never forgot her from that moment. When she was eighteen, we were married. She was only twenty-four when she died, but I remember her still as vividly--"
He stopped, as though the subject were too painful, and then resumed, half dreamily:
"I am going to tell you now what will lend an added value to that little trinket I have given you for Winifred." He paused again, and drew a deep breath, looking at me hard. "It belonged to--to my wife, when she was a child of Winifred's age. Winifred will prize it, because it was--her mother's."
I stood up, and Roderick, rising also, confronted me.
"Pray what is the object of further secrecy?" he pleaded. "Tell me, is not Winifred my child, the child of my dead wife?"
I bowed my head in assent. Concealment was neither useful nor desirable any longer.
The look of triumph, of exaltation, of joy, which swept over his face was good to see.
"But you will wait?" I pleaded, in my return. "You will go to Ireland, as agreed, and your child shall be all your own entirely and forever?"
"I will wait," he answered quietly, "though it is hard."
And then we shook hands and parted. I felt that I must hurry away: for I could not go on talking of commonplace subjects, either to Roderick or to any of the others. As I took leave of our hostess she said, laughingly: