Your discovery may be a coincidence, nothing more.

But I HAVE been influenced, sir,--influenced by one of the most perfect goddess-like--yes, sir; one of the most simple girlish creatures that God ever sent upon earth.

A woman that I should be proud to claim as my daughter, a woman that would always be the superior of any man who dare aspire to be her husband! A young lady as peerless in her beauty as she is in her accomplishments, and whose equal don't walk this planet! I know, sir, YOU don't follow me; I know, Mr.Hathaway, your Puritan prejudices; your Church proclivities, your worldly sense of propriety; and, above all, sir, the blanked hypocritical Pharisaic doctrines of your party--I mean no offense to YOU, sir, personally--blind you to that girl's perfections.

She, poor child, herself has seen it and felt it, but never, in her blameless innocence and purity, suspecting the cause, 'There is,' she said to me last night, confidentially, 'something strangely antagonistic and repellent in our natures, some undefined and nameless barrier between our ever understanding each other.' You comprehend, Mr.Hathaway, she does full justice to your intentions and your unquestioned abilities.

'I am not blind,' she said, 'to Mr.
Hathaway's gifts, and it is very possible the fault lies with me.' Her very words, sir." "Then you believe she is perfectly ignorant of her real mother ?" asked Paul, with a steady voice, but a whitening face.
"As an unborn child," said the colonel, emphatically.