"
With a beating heart I solemnly gave the required assurance.
"Then, Mr. Ibbetson, it is right that you should know that Colonel
Ibbetson, when he was paying his infamous addresses to my daughter, gave
her unmistakably to understand that you were his natural son, by his
cousin, Miss Catherine Biddulph, afterwards Madame Pasquier de
la Mariere!"
"Oh, oh, oh!" I cried, "surely you must be mistaken--he knew it was
impossible--he had been refused by my mother three times--he went to
India nearly a year before I was born--he--"
Then Mrs. Deane said, producing an old letter from her pocket:
"Do you know his handwriting and his crest? Do you happen to recollect
once bringing me a note from at Ibbetson Hall? Here it is," and she
handed it to me. It was unmistakably his, and I remembered it at once,
and this is what it said:
"For Heaven's sake, dear friend, don't breathe a word to any living soul
of what you were clever enough to guess last night! There is a likeness,
of course.
"Poor Antinoues! He is quite ignorant of the true relationship, which has
caused me many a pang of shame and remorse....
"'Que voulez-vous? Elle etait ravissaure!' ... We were cousins, much
thrown together; 'both were so young, and one so beautiful!' .
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