ee Mrs. Boyd."

Major Crawford felt the girl's heart beating against his own. He raised
the face and kissed it, amid tears, deeply touched.

"You must forgive me. You do not know what it is to have some one stand
between you and your child all these years. I used to dream how it would
have been with twin girls running about, climbing one's knees, doing a
hundred sweet and tender things. Zay has been so lovely, so loving; but
all these years we never forgot you. We gave the most fervent thanks for
your mother's recovery, and when you are safe in her arms--oh, it seems
almost as if it was too much joy."

"It is so strange," and her voice was tremulous. "For I never could have
dreamed of anything like this. I did not dream, for it seemed as if a
man who had lost wife and child would want to begin over again, and in a
good many ways I tried to believe I had been too visionary--longing for
things quite beyond my reach. So I have been praying that God would send
what was best for me and trying to make myself content. Oh, are you
quite sure there is no mistake?" and there was a pitifully beseeching
sound in her voice.

"If we can believe that thief of a woman. Oh, to think she should carry
away our baby and leave us her little dead child," and the only half
conquered passion flamed up in his face again.

"But, you see, if I had been the nurse's child as she thought, the poor
nurse who was dead, it would be a brave and tender act----"

"I have no pity for her. You must come away. Oh, Marguerite, there is
your own sweet mother, who when she hears will want to clasp you to her
heart at once. And Zaidee, your twin sister----"

She shrank and stiffened a little. Zaidee Crawford would not be so glad
to welcome her. She felt it in her inmost heart. For she had been the
pet and darling of the household all these years. All the girls had paid
her a curious sort of homage. She had been invested with a halo of
romance, and generous as she seemed with her equals, she had established
a rigorous distance between them. Lilian fancied she was annoyed by the
suggestion of a resemblance between them.

Her father was momentarily piqued by the unyielding lines of her figure
and the hesitancy.

"Oh, my child you must take in the strength, the absolute reality of our
claim, unless you cannot believe this woman--"

"I would stake my very life on her truth, and I can recall so many
things that seemed strange to me then, especially these la