care of him and legitimatize our child. I was forced
to tell him what I had done with her, and that the Trust could not be
disturbed until she was of age and her own mistress. He assented. We
married, but he died within a year. He died, leaving with me his
acknowledgment of her as his child, and the right to claim her if I
chose."

"And?"--interrupted the colonel with sparkling eyes.

"I DON'T CHOOSE.

"Hear me!" she continued firmly. "With his name and my own mistress,
and the girl, as I believed, properly provided for and ignorant of my
existence, I saw no necessity for reopening the past. I resolved to
lead a new life as his widow. I came north. In the little New England
town where I first stopped, the country people contracted my name to
Mrs. Argalls. I let it stand so. I came to New York and entered the
service of the Lord and the bonds of the Church, Henry Pendleton, as
Mrs. Argalls, and have remained so ever since."

"But you would not object to Yerba knowing that you lived, and rightly
bore her father's name?" said Pendleton eagerly.

The woman looked at him with compressed lips. "I should. I have
buried all my past, and all its consequences. Let me not seek to
reopen it or recall them."

"But if you knew that she was as proud as yourself, and that this very
uncertainty as to her name and parentage, although she has never known
the whole truth, kept her from taking the name and becoming the wife of
a man whom she loves?"

"Whom she loves!"

"Yes; one of her guardians---Hathaway--to whom you intrusted her when
she was a child."

"Paul Hathaway--but HE knew it."

"Yes. But SHE does not know he does. He has kept the secret
faithfully, even when she refused him."

She was silent for a moment, and then said,--

"So be it. I consent."

"And you'll write to her?" said the colonel eagerly.

"No. But YOU may, and if you want them I will furnish you with such
proofs as you may require."

"Thank you." He held out his hand with such a happy yet childish
gratitude upon his worn face that her own trembled slightly as she took
it. "Good-by!"

"I shall see you soon," she said.

"I shall be here," he said grimly.

"I think not," she returned, with the first relaxation of her smileless
face, and moved away.

As she passed out she asked to see the house surgeon. How soon did he
think the patient she had been conversing with could be removed from
the hospital with safety? Did Mrs. Arga