Again he called her by her name, but added with
rising confidence, 'My Venetia!'
'Your child, your child,' she murmured. 'Your own Venetia.'
He pressed his lips to hers; he breathed over her a thousand
blessings; she felt his tears trickling on her neck.
At length Venetia looked up and sighed; she was exhausted by the
violence of her emotions: her father relaxed his grasp with infinite
tenderness, watching her with delicate solicitude; she leaned her arm
upon his shoulder with downcast eyes.
Herbert gently took her disengaged hand, and pressed it to his lips.
'I am as in a dream,' murmured Venetia.
'The daughter of my heart has found her sire,' said Herbert in an
impassioned voice. 'The father who has long lived upon her fancied
image; the father, I fear, she has been bred up to hate.'
'Oh! no, no!' said Venetia, speaking rapidly and with a slight shiver;
'not hate! it was a secret, his being was a secret, his name was never
mentioned; it was unknown.'
'A secret! My existence a secret from my child, my beautiful fond
child!' exclaimed Herbert in a tone even more desolate than bitter.
'Why did they not let you at least hate me!'
'My father!' said Venetia, in a firmer voice, and with returning
animation, yet gazing around her with a still distracted air, 'Am I
with my father? The clouds clear from my brain.
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