"You have never looked at them?"
"Never."
"But why, dearest?"
"It always seemed to make papa so unhappy--anything to do with his old
name. Oliver!"--she turned upon him suddenly, and for the first time she
clung to him, hiding her face against his shoulder--"Oliver!--I don't
know what made him unhappy--I don't know why he changed his name.
Sometimes I think--there may have been some terrible thing between
him--and my mother."
He put his arm round her, close and tenderly.
"What makes you think that?" Then he whispered to her--"Tell your
lover--your husband--tell him everything."
She shrank in delicious tremor from the great word, and it was a few
moments before she could collect her thoughts. Then she said--still
resting against him in the dark--and in a low rapid voice, as though she
followed the visions of an inner sense:
"She died when I was only four. I just remember--it is almost my first
recollection of anything--seeing her carried up-stairs--" She broke off.
"And oh! it's so strange!--"
"Strange? She was ill?"
"Yes, but--what I seem to remember never explains itself--and I did not
dare to ask papa.
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