“Estelle!” exclaimed Colonel Mapleson, in a shocked, yet sympathetic tone, “of all the romances that I have ever read or known, this is the strangest!”

“Yes,” Mrs. Mapleson continued, “I had persistently refrained from telling my husband my secret, and Nellie alone knew it. At first I only meant to reserve it until he should come for me, as he was to do immediately upon securing his position. I was sure that, if he knew, he would instantly demand my return to him, and an open acknowledgment of our union, and so I kept putting it off, until now, that I had received that fatal news, it was too late. I could not send for him to come to me, for then the secret must come out with all its direful results, while I knew he could not take care of me in a strange country when he was so unsuccessful in his own. I was almost insane for a time, for I saw no way out of my difficulties. My mother was so feeble that she demanded the constant attendance of a nurse, and the most expensive luxuries, to prolong her life. Where would the money come from to furnish all these, if it should become known that I had violated the conditions of my uncle’s will? Where, too, would the money come to meet my own expenses of maternity, and to care for the little one that would soon be mine? All too late I realized the terrible mistake that I had made in yielding to Charlie’s importunities, although I loved my husband most tenderly.

“‘What shall I do?’ I cried, in despair, to my sister, one day, when all these facts, and the terrible fate awaiting their revelation, had been reviewed for the hundredth time.

“‘I’ll tell you what I’ve thought of Estelle,’ Nellie answered, gravely. ‘It seems a dreadful thing to do—heartless, dishonorable, and everything else that is bad—and yet I see no alternative. We must manage some way to keep your money—at least, so long as mamma lives: we must not let her suffer, though I’d work my fingers to the bone rather than do such a thing for my own sake. William Mapleson does not need your fortune; he has enough already. Robert Dale, that miserable old miser, would only ‘hide it in a napkin,’ if he were to get it. So we may as well have the benefit of it, at least until Charlie is able to do something for you. Now for my plan. You have had a long illness; you are drooping, failing; you need, must have, a change. Mamma is quite comfortable just now, and, with the nurse to attend her, does not really need any one else. But that she may not feel lonely without us, we will send for her old friend, Miss Willford, to come for a long visit, and then we will go off on a trip for your benefit.’

“‘Oh, Nell, will you go with me?’ I sobbed, in a burst of relief and gratitude.

“‘Indeed I shall. You did not suppose I would send you off alone, I hope,’ she answered, and then she further unfolded her plan.

“We would pretend that we both needed a change, after the confinement of the last few months. No one would then suspect any secret reason for our going. We would travel a while, keeping as secluded as possible, and finally go to some large city—Boston we finally decided upon, as we had never been there, and knew not a soul living there—where we would remain until after the birth of my child. Then we would give it into the care of some one, paying well for it, until my husband was in a position to claim me; and then, as soon as I had regained my strength, we would return home, and no one would be the wiser for what had occurred.

“This plan gave me new courage. All my former energy returned, and I immediately began my arrangements for my proposed trip. Mamma and her nurse both favored it, and Miss Willford was sent for. I wrote my husband of our plans—or as much regarding them as we told anybody—telling him how to address his letters; and then Nellie and I went away, without exciting the suspicion of any one regarding our real object. We went first to Philadelphia, where we remained in secluded lodgings for a few weeks, giving our names as ‘Mrs. Marston and maid, Nellie Durham’—Nellie preferring to act in that capacity. Then we proceeded to New York, where we stopped a while, finally going on to Boston, where my little girl was born.”

Geoffrey turned abruptly around and faced Mr. Huntress as Mrs. Mapleson reached this point in her story. Never until that moment had he suspected that Gladys was not his kind friend’s own daughter. But he knew that he had formerly resided in Boston. He remembered that Mrs. Mapleson had addressed him as August Damon, and how she had been overcome upon meeting him. He remembered, too, how, when he had proposed leaving the room while she made her confession to her husband, she had said “if any one had a right to hear her story, he had,” and putting all these things together, it flashed upon him that Gladys might have been that little girl who was born, under such peculiar circumstances, in Boston.

Mr. Huntress met his inquiring glance, and smiled faintly; but he was very pale and sorrowful.

It had not been an easy matter for him to sit there and listen to that story, and to have it revealed that Gladys was not his very own. He had always hoped to be able to keep the secret of her adoption.

“Is it true, Uncle August?” Geoffrey questioned.

Mr. Huntress nodded gravely.

“How very, very strange!” said the young man, with a perplexed face.

Then his countenance suddenly brightened!

He leaned eagerly forward, laid his hand on Mr. Huntress’ knee, and whispered, excitedly:

“Then he—Everet Mapleson, is her half-brother, and that marriage was nothing but an illegal farce!”

“That is true—I have been thinking of that very thing,” returned Mr. Huntress, grasping the hand upon his knee with cordial sympathy, “and though it has been very hard to have the fact revealed, that our dear girl was not quite our own, yet my joy at having that great trouble so easily wiped out of existence, counteracts all the pain.”

“What is it?” Mrs. Mapleson asked, wondering at their eager whispering and excited manner.

“I will tell you later, madame,” Mr. Huntress replied. “Pardon the interruption, and pray go on.”

“William, the worst of my story is yet to come,” Mrs. Mapleson resumed, turning with a pathetic look to her husband.

He reached forth one hand, and laid it affectionately upon hers.

“Do not think me so hard, Estelle,” he said, in a low, kind tone; “I do not forget the ‘beam’ that was in my own eye, and I have no right to criticise the ‘mote’ in yours, especially when you have been so great a sufferer, and your hands were so tied by your dependent mother and sister. Your heart was all right—you would never have concealed anything but for the force of circumstances.”

“Oh, wait; you have yet to learn that my heart was not all right,” she moaned, dropping her head upon her hand. “My baby was a beautiful child—I realized that the first time I looked upon her, but I did not dare to let my love go out toward her, for I knew that I must give her up, at least for a time. And yet, what to do with her was a very trying question. At first I thought of putting her into some institution, requiring some pledge that she should not be given away within a specified time. But I found I could not do this, so I advertised for some one to adopt her, promising to give five hundred dollars with the child. I received numberless letters in reply, but only one out of them all really pleased me, and this was signed ‘August and Alice Damon.’”

“Ah! now I understand,” interposed Colonel Mapleson, glancing quickly at Mr. Huntress, and looking intensely relieved.

Then his eyes wandered to Geoffrey.

“How wonderful! that those two should have found a home in the same family!” he murmured.

“I appointed a meeting with Mr. and Mrs. Damon,” his wife went on. “They came, and at once I knew that they were the very people to whom I would confide my little girl, in preference to all others. But you gave me an assumed name,” she said, pausing, and turning to Mr. Huntress.

“Not an assumed name, madame, but only a part of my real name, which is August Damon Huntress,” that gentleman explained.

“Why did you withhold your surname from me?”

“Madame, I knew well enough that your name was not Marston. I felt sure that no mother would give away her child, as you were doing, and reveal her identity. On the other hand, I did not wish the identity of the child preserved. I did not intend that you should have any advantage over me. If I took her, I meant her to be mine wholly, without running any risk of having her taken from me, or of ever learning that she had been abandoned to the care of strangers. Consequently, I gave you the name of Damon.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Mapleson, with a sigh, “as it happened, it made no difference, but if I had suspected it at the time, you would not have had my child, for I meant to keep track of her. I meant to have her again just as soon as my husband and I were reunited.”

“But you told me,” began Mr. Huntress, with an amazed, horrified face——

“I know I did,” the lady interrupted. “I promised you that I would never trouble you—would never even ask to see her. I pretended to give her to you unreservedly, although, you remember, I would not subscribe to any legal form of adoption. I allowed you and others to think me a heartless, unnatural monster for the sake of gaining for my little one a good home and loving care until I could see my way clear to demand her restoration. It was dishonorable—it was a wretched deception, but it was all a part of that terrible secret that had to be guarded at whatever cost. But I had to pay dearly for it, as you will soon realize.

“My sister and I left Boston, both of us in better spirits than we had been since leaving England, for we believed that everything had been so successfully concealed there was not the slightest danger of discovery. We came back to our home to find mamma more comfortable than when we left her, having had a bright, cheerful visit with her old friend, while she appeared delighted with the improvement which our trip had made in us. But she lived only one short month after that. She took a sudden cold, which brought on a hemorrhage that terminated her life in a few hours.

“More than this,” Mrs. Mapleson went on, hurriedly, while she pressed her clasped hands over her heart, as if to hold in check its painful throbbings, while she related the saddest event of her whole life, “on the very day that she was buried a bulky package was brought to me, postmarked ‘London.’ It contained considerable manuscript, a Bank of England note for one hundred and fifty pounds, my marriage certificate, and—a letter. The letter told me—oh, William!” she burst forth in a quavering voice, “you knew that your Annie must die. You had to face the dread fact before it really came, and you were somewhat prepared for it; but I—I had no warning; the shock fell like a thunderbolt to crush me! My Charlie was dead long before I knew it. He had been in his grave nearly a fortnight when the terrible news came to me. The letter was from a friend of my husband, and stated that he had met with an accident that must result fatally, having been—crushed—in a falling elevator.”

The poor woman appeared hardly capable of going on. It seemed as if all the agony of that dreadful time was revived by this recital.

“He had only a few hours to live,” she went on, at last, “and, though he could not hold a pen to write me one line, he made up that package with his own hands, telling his friend that it was to be forwarded to Miss Estelle Everet. You see, he kept my secret even while dying, and would not send me one of the fond messages of which I know his heart must have been full, for fear of betraying me. He said that I would take charge of the publishing of the manuscript, if I thought best to give it to the world, for the expenses of which he inclosed the Bank of England note. That, however, was only a blind, for the manuscript was in such a crude state it could not be published, and he had simply taken that way to send me, without exciting suspicion, the only existing proof of our marriage, and what little money he possessed.

“My fond, faithful Charlie! He deserved a better fate and a better wife. Of course, after that, there was no fear of discovery, even though I mourned with the bitterness of despair over my lost hopes. My mother’s death was excuse enough for my grief, though people said I laid it to heart more than they imagined I could. For a long time I felt as if life was little better than a mockery. Mine certainly thus far had been a miserable failure. My husband dead, my child lost to me forever—for, of course, I could never claim her now—what was there in the world for me to live for?

“After a time I grew bitter and reckless. I told myself if I could not have the blessings that usually crown a woman’s life, I would make the most of the fortune that I still possessed; I would travel—I would see the world—I would not deny myself a single wish or whim. My sister and I started off again. We went to England first, where I found my husband’s grave, but did not dare even to mark it with any expression of my love. We went to Egypt and Palestine, joining a party of travelers thither, and after spending another year in roving we came back once more to America.

“Three months after our return, Nellie, too, sickened and died, and I was left utterly alone in the world—alone with my ill-gotten wealth and splendor. What was my money to me then?—like the apples of Sodom; and yet I experienced a grim sort of satisfaction that the income of Uncle Jabez’s property was still mine, that I had outwitted the world and the lawyers or executors of Uncle Jabez’s will by my art and cunning. But only a little more than a year remained before I should be twenty-five, when, if my cousin and I were both unmarried, Robert Dale would have our fortune. I grew rebellious at the thought. I had nothing but my money to live for now, and my money I wanted to keep. I had sacrificed truth, principle, and all the noblest elements of my woman’s nature for it, and I was willing to make almost any sacrifice now to retain it.

“Just about this time you returned, William, and,” a burning blush now suffused the face of the proud woman, “I welcomed you with secret joy, and instantly made up my mind to marry you if you would have me. I made myself agreeable to you with that sole object in view. You know how well I succeeded, although you did not dream that I was scheming for that, and I did not experience a qualm, since I did not deceive you regarding the state of my heart toward you; my acceptance of you was as frank as your proposal for my hand. Neither of us professed any love for the other: we simply decided that it would be a wise union, and that we could be a very comfortable couple. A strange, heartless arrangement, I suppose the world would have said could it have read our motives, but it would have seemed even more strange if the experience of our lives had been revealed. I was hardened and reckless then, for I felt that fate had used me very badly. I have not deserved the quiet, peaceful years—quiet and peaceful but for the stings of conscience—that have been my lot since. I have been growing happier during all that time, growing to——”

She broke off suddenly, flashing a quick, pained glance at her husband, while the blood again mounted to her brow.

“During all these years,” she continued, presently, “I have never learned anything regarding my child, save once. Last summer, after Everet left me at Newport, to come home, I was comparatively alone there for a few days, my friends, whom I was expecting to meet, not having arrived, and a sudden impulse seized me to go to Boston and try to learn something about my daughter. I had always kept the card you gave me, Mr. Huntress, and I imagined if you were still in that city I could trace you through the directory.

“Upon my arrival I stepped into a drug store on Washington street and asked for the directory, to begin my search. You can imagine something of my amazement and consternation when I found myself face to face with the physician who had attended me at the birth of my child. He also recognized me, although I tried to deceive him regarding my identity. But he insisted that he knew me, and finding denial useless, I appealed to him for information regarding my child. He said he knew the man well who had adopted her—that he had been for years the family physician; but he would not give me his name or address.”

“That must have been Dr. Turner,” said Mr. Huntress, looking astonished; “but how could he have known that we adopted the child? We never told him that she was not our own.”

“True; but he was called to attend her for some slight ailment only a few days after you took her, and recognized her; he would not, however, violate your confidence nor his sense of honor by telling me anything by which I could trace you or the child. He comforted me greatly, though, by assuring me that she was a beautiful and talented young lady; that she had received every advantage, and was surrounded by the fondest love and care. I remember now that I have seen her,” Mrs. Mapleson said, with starting tears, “and my heart yearns strongly for her as I think of it. I saw her at Yale when my son graduated; she was with you,” turning to Geoffrey, “and she is truly a lovely girl. Mr. Huntress, you have held your trust sacred, and I am deeply grateful to you.”