cheek.

Edith put the letter into her hands, saying, eagerly:

"Read it--read it!--it will tell its own story."

Her companion obeyed her, and, as she read, her face grew stern and
white--her eyes glittered with a fiery light which told of an outraged
spirit aroused to a point where it would have been dangerous for the
woman who once had deeply wronged her, had she been living, to have
crossed her path again.

"If I had known!--if I had known--" she began, when she reached the
end. Then, suddenly checking herself, she added, tenderly, to Edith:
"My love, it seems so wonderful--all this that has happened to you and
to me! We must take time to talk it all over by ourselves. You can
excuse yourself to your friend, can you not, and come with me to the
Waldorf? Say that I wish to keep you for the remainder of the day and
night, but will return you to her in the morning."

Edith's face beamed with delight at this proposal.

"Yes, indeed," she said, rising to comply at once with the request. "I
am sure Nellie will willingly give me up, when I whisper the truth in
her ear. My dear--dear mother!" she added, tremulously, as she bent
forward and kissed the beautiful face with quivering lips, "this
wonderful revelation seems too joyful to be true!"

"Edith, my child," gravely said Isabel Stewart, as she held the girl a
little away from her and searched her face with anxious eyes, "after
learning what you did of me, from those horrible letters, is there no
shrinking in your heart--is there no feeling of--of shame or of
pitiful contempt for me?"

"Not an atom, dear," whispered the trustful maiden, whose keen
intuitions had long since fathomed the character of the woman before
her; "to me you are as pure and dear as if that man--whoever he may
have been--had never cast a shadow upon your life by the shameful
deception which he practiced upon you."

"My blessed little comforter! you shall be rewarded for your faith in
me," returned Mrs. Stewart, her lips wreathed in fondest smiles, her
eyes glowing with happiness. "But go excuse yourself to Mrs. Morrell,
then we will take leave of our hostess, and go home."

Ten minutes later they were on their way to the Waldorf.

It was rather a silent drive, for both were still too deeply moved
over their recent reunion to care to enter into details just then. It
was happiness enough to sit side by side, hand clasped in hand,
knowing that they were mother and daughter, and in tenderest