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 the 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.
"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?"
"Perhaps not," replied Alice quietly. "I am your countrywoman. My father
was an American, and one of whom you have heard--and no good, alas!--for
many a year."
"And who then was he?" asked Middleton.
"I know not whether you will hate me for telling you," replied Alice,
looking him sadly though firmly in the face. "There was a man--long years
since, in your childhood--whose plotting brain proved the ruin of himself
and many another; a man whose great designs made him a sort of potentate,
whose schemes became of national importance, and produced results even
upon the history of the country in which he acted.
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