I can never make you know the bitterness of
spirit that I experience, as I write these lines, for the questions you
have just asked me have completely unmanned me--have made a veritable
coward of me when I should have boldly told you the truth, let the
consequence be what it would; whether it would have touched your heart
with pity and fresh love for a sorrowing and repentant man, or driven you
away from me in hate and scorn such as I experience for myself. You have
just told me that I have made your life a very happy one; that you love
me dearly. Oh, my darling, you will never know, until I am gone, how I
hug these sweet words to my soul, and exult over them with secret joy,
and you will never know, either, until then, how I long and hunger to
hear you call me just once by the sacred name 'father,'
"Yes, Mona, I am your father; you are my child, and yet I had not the
courage to tell you so, with all the rest of the sad story, this morning,
for fear I should see all the love die out of your face, and you would
turn coldly from me as you learned the great wrong I once did your
mother.
"I told you that your father is dead. So he is, to you, and has been for
many long years; for when I brought you from England, when you were only
two years old, I vowed that you should never know that I was the man who,
by my cowardice and neglect, ruined your mother's life; so I adopted you
as my niece, and you have always believed yourself to be the child of my
only and idolized sister.
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