Such crowding thoughts, such overflowing emotions, could not be compressed in those four walls.

I rose and walked the room back and forth, without fear of being over-heard, on the soft carpet of velvet roses.

What revelations had been made known to me since I had quitted that room! How low I had been degraded,--how royally exalted! A child unentitled to her father's name!--a maiden, endowed with a princely heart! I walked as one in a dream, doubting my own identity.

But one master thought governed every other.
"He loves me!" I repeated to myself.

"Ernest Linwood loves me! Whatever be the future, that present bliss is mine.