‘Venetia!’ exclaimed Herbert, with streaming eyes, as he listened with anguish to these incoherent sentences.  ‘My Venetia loves me!’

‘Oh! she always loved you,’ replied Venetia; always, always.  Before she knew her father she loved him.  I dare say you think I do not love you, because I am not used to speak to a father.  Everything must be learnt, you know,’ she said, with a faint, sad smile; ’and then it was so sudden!  I do not think my mother knows it yet.  And after all, though I found you out in a moment, still, I know not why, I thought it was a picture.  But I read your verses, and I knew them by heart at once; but now my memory has worn out, for I am ill, and everything has gone cross with me.  And all because my father wrote me verses.  ’Tis very strange, is not it?’

‘Sweet lamb of my affections,’ exclaimed Herbert to himself, ’I fear me much this sudden meeting with one from whose bosom you ought never to have been estranged, has been for the moment too great a trial for this delicate brain.’

‘I will not tell my mother,’ said Venetia; ‘she will be angry.’

‘Your mother, darling; where is your mother?’ said Herbert, looking, if possible, paler than he was wont.

She was at Arqua with me, and on the lake for months, but where we are now, I cannot say.  If I could only remember where we are now,’ she added with earnestness, and with a struggle to collect herself, ’I should know everything.’

’This is Rovigo, my child, the inn of Rovigo.  You are travelling with your mother.  Is it not so?’

‘Yes! and we came this morning, and it rained.  Now I know everything,’ said Venetia, with an animated and even cheerful air.

‘And we met in the vestibule, my sweet,’ continued Herbert, in a soothing voice; ’we came out of opposite chambers, and you knew me; my Venetia knew me.  Try to tell me, my darling,’ he added, in a tone of coaxing fondness, ‘try to remember how Venetia knew her father.’

‘He was so like his picture at Cherbury,’ replied Venetia.

‘Cherbury!’ exclaimed Herbert, with a deep-drawn sigh.

’Only your hair has grown grey, dear father; but it is long, quite as long as in your picture.’

‘Her dog called Marmion!’ murmured Herbert to himself, ’and my portrait, too!  You saw your father’s portrait, then, every day, love?’

’Oh, no! said Venetia, shaking her head, ’only once, only once.  And I never told mamma.  It was where no one could go, but I went there one day.  It was in a room that no one ever entered except mamma, but I entered it.  I stole the key, and had a fever, and in my fever I confessed all.  But I never knew it.  Mamma never told me I confessed it, until many, many years afterwards.  It was the first, the only time she ever mentioned to me your name, my father.’

’And she told you to shun me, to hate me?  She told you I was a villain, a profligate, a demon? eh? eh?  Was it not so, Venetia?’