After a time she began to recover; she opened her eyes, looked round, and spoke--"Where is he?"
"Here! I am here, young lady," replied Woodruff, as he looked her earnestly in the face to fix her attention. "What of me?"
"My father!" exclaimed Fanny, as she again sunk into a state of insensibility.
"Father!" repeated Woodruff--"my father! I her father! She my daughter!" He strove to wrench his arms free to clasp her to his bosom, but again he could not.
"Take her away, Robson," said Mrs. Rowel. "What does all this mean? Take her away!--take her away!"
And Fanny was carried back by the strong man to the room into which she had at first been introduced; while James Woodruff remained standing upon that spot, gazing on that ground where his child had laid, as though the great world contained in it no other place which, even to him, deserved for a moment to be looked upon.
_Is so very necessary between the ninth and eleventh that it could not possibly be dispensed with._
When Fanny was sufficiently recovered, Mrs. Rowel questioned her very particularly upon the circumstances that had occurred, and exhibited a great deal of laudable curiosity to be fully enlightened touching the mystery that had been enacted before her. Fanny would fain have kept it to herself; but too much had already passed in the presence of the doctor's wife to render such a line of conduct altogether practicable. Nevertheless, it was not until a faithful promise of secrecy had been made on the part of Mrs. Rowel, that Fanny was induced to communicate to her so much of her story as was needful to render something like an intelligible whole. In this account she omitted any mention of the source from whence the information respecting her father had been obtained; and also forbore making the most distant allusion to the death of her late master, or to the part which she secretly believed the doctor had taken in that event.
The lady listened to her narrative with great astonishment, and when it was concluded, seized both her hands in an affectionate manner, and exclaimed, "Then, my dear, you are my niece:--the doctor is your own uncle, for your mother and he were brother and sister!"
This information, as may be readily supposed, astonished Fanny, though it did not affect her so much as the discovery of her father made just before. She thought of her own uncle being a murderer;--she regretted ever having mentioned the subject to Colin, and resolved never to allude to it again before any one. She dreaded the very thought that, bad as he was, her own uncle should owe to her his degradation, and an ignominious death on a public scaffold. The thought of all this she could not endure; and, in order to avert the possibility of danger from any unexpected quarter, she now begged of the doctor's wife to hide from her husband the fact that she _had_ discovered her father in those cells, lest it might lead to a still worse danger, the bare possibility of which she dreaded to think upon. Mrs. Rowel not only promised to do all this,--a promise which eventually she fulfilled,--but also gave Fanny the fullest assurance that she would exercise her utmost endeavours in the attempt to prevail upon her husband to set James Woodruff at liberty. For all this Fanny returned her most heartfelt thanks, and then took her leave.