She looked up, and from a square opening in the wall far above her reach, she saw a streaming light enter the dungeon.
“Ada!” again cried Gray, and she saw him peering into the gloom below, and shading his eyes from the glare of the light he carried. “Ada!” he cried, impatiently.
Gray immediately disappeared from the opening, and all was again darkness whence the light had issued.
“What can he mean?” thought Ada. “Did he suppose that already my spirit had yielded to this gloomy prison, and is he disappointed to find that I still live?”
While Ada was pursuing these reflections, Gray suddenly re-appeared, and placing a ladder from the opening into the dungeon, he said, in a voice intended to be conciliatory,—
“There is no death to meet,” said Gray. “I mean you no harm.”
“Because you have done me as much, short of taking my life,” said Ada, “as lies in your power. By what right—by what flimsy shadow of justice am I immured here?”
“Ascend I say,” cried Gray. “There is warmth and comfort above here.”
“I may as well,” thought Ada, with a shudder, “meet my death from his hands above as by starvation in this place.”
She placed her foot upon the ladder, and slowly ascended. When she neared the top, Gray reached out his hand, and assisted her into the room in which he was.
“And so do you,” replied Ada, fixing her eyes upon Jacob Gray’s pale face.
“You—you think I mean you harm,” he said, in a hesitating tone, and avoiding Ada’s gaze as much as possible.
“Think!” repeated Ada,—“think, Jacob Gray!”
“Jacob Gray?” he cried. “You speak strangely. I thought you now knew me.”
“I have told you I am your father, girl.”
“No,” said Ada, with sudden energy; “on my soul, no—as I hope for heaven, no!”
“Yes, Jacob Gray, for the honour of all fathers—for the credit of humanity, I cannot—will not believe myself your daughter. No, no, Jacob Gray, I am no longer scared by that dreadful thought—thank God!”
“My words may be incoherent—not aptly chosen—but the sense is the same. Jacob Gray, you are neither father, uncle, kith, nor kin of mine. No, no!”
“There—there!” cried Ada. “Your fears speak the truth; you have confessed the cheat. Jacob Gray, I could forgive you all, now that that dreadful weight is removed from my heart.”