“Come, then,” said he, at length. “Let us leave this poor fallen antagonist in his blood, and go whither you will lead me. I will judge for myself. At all events, I will not leave my hereditary home without knowing what my power is.”
“Come,” responded Alice; and she turned back; but then returned and threw a handkerchief over the dead man’s face, which while they spoke had assumed that quiet, ecstatic expression of joy which often is observed to overspread the faces of those who die of gunshot wounds, however fierce the passion in which their spirits took their flight. With this strange, grand, awful joy did the dead man gaze upward into the very eyes and hearts, as it were, of the two that now bent over him. They looked at one another.
“Whence comes this expression?” said Middleton, thoughtfully. “Alice, methinks he is reconciled to us now; and that we are members of one reconciled family, all of whom are in heaven but me.”
Tuesday, May 4th.--“How strange is this whole situation between you and me,” said Middleton, as they went up the winding pathway that led towards the house. “Shall I ever understand it? Do you mean ever to explain it to me? That I should find you here with that old man [The allusion here is apparently to the old man who proclaims himself Alice’s father, in the portion dated April 14th. He figures hereafter as the old Hospitaller, Hammond. The reader must not take this present passage as referring to the death of Eldredge, which has just taken place in he preceding section. The author is now beginning to elaborate the relation of Middleton and Alice. As will be seen, farther on, the death of Eldredge is ignored and abandoned; Eldredge is revived, and the story proceeds in another way.--G. P. L.], so mysterious, apparently so poor, yet so powerful! What [is] his relation to you?”
“A close one,” replied Alice sadly. “He was my father!”
“Your father!” repeated Middleton, starting back. “It does but heighten the wonder! Your father! And yet, by all the tokens that birth and breeding, and habits of thought and native character can show, you are my countrywoman. That wild, free spirit was never born in the breast of an Englishwoman; that slight frame, that slender beauty, that frail envelopment of a quick, piercing, yet stubborn and patient spirit,--are those the properties of an English maiden?”