seemed to add dignity to the whole. So, her mother
had stood, in girlhood.

"Oh, my child! my child! have you no word of gladness for me after these
long years! The baby I never saw--my Marguerite."

Was her tongue frozen and her lips stiff? Oh, what should she say? How
could she welcome this stranger?

"And that cruel woman has stolen your love from us, as she stole your
beautiful body. Oh, where is she? Let me see her!"

"You were to keep calm, Major," exclaimed the doctor. "We have gone over
all this, and the poor woman is dying. To upbraid her now would be
nothing short of murder."

The Major glanced wildly around. "Why think of _our_ loss and sorrow.
She _knew_ the child was not hers. And she ran off like a thief in the
night. Oh, I can't forgive her."

"Oh, you must," cried the girl with the first gleam of emotion she had
shown. "For she mistook the nurse for the mother. Everything must have
been in confusion. She thought of me as a motherless baby, perhaps to be
cast on charity----"

"But all these years! And poverty, when a lovely home awaited you;
brothers and a sweet sister and such a mother! Oh, she ought to know and
suffer for the crime."

"She was almost crazy with her own grief. And she was good and tender
and devoted to me. She shall not suffer for it in her dying moments."

She stood there proudly, her face a-light with a sort of heroic
devotion. So her mother would have taken up any wrong. Was he unduly
bitter?

"Oh, my darling, have you no love for me? No want for your own sweet
mother--"

Something in his pleading tone touched her and his face betrayed strong
agitation. His arms seemed to hang listlessly by his side. She took a
few steps toward him and then they suddenly clasped her in a vehement
embrace.

The doctor glanced at Mrs. Barrington and they both left the room.

"It has been a hard fight," he said. "He was so enraged at first that I
was afraid he would come and have it out with the dying woman. The fact
that she knew the child was not hers and yet took it away seemed to stir
all the blood in his body. Poor thing--one has to feel sorry for her;
but he raged over the privations he thought his child had endured, and
her being here in an equivocal position. The Crawfords were always very
proud. And one could not expect a girl just in the dawn of womanhood to
fly to a stranger's arms."

"Yet it took her so by surprise, and she has a proud, reticent nature."

"Let us go and s