innocent little waif, bring her up as your own, and never let her know
anything about the stain that rests upon her birth? She is pure; she
is not to blame for the sins of her parents, and I cannot bear the
thought of her growing up to learn of her heritage of shame, as she
would be sure to do if I should live and rear her as my child. Your
last letter tells me that you will be in Rome in less than a
fortnight. I cannot meet you--I can never again meet any one whom I
have known; and so, Edith--I am going to die. I give my child to
you--I believe you will not refuse my last request--and you will find
her, with the woman who nursed me when she was born, at No. 2 Via del
Vecchia. The woman has my instructions--she believes that I am only
going away on a little trip with my husband; but you will show her
this letter, and prove to her that you have authority to take the
child away. When you go home, you will take her with you, as your own,
and no one need ever know that she is not your own. Do not ever reveal
the truth to her; let her grow up happy and care-free, like other
girls who are of honorable birth; and if the dead can watch over and
shield the living, you and yours shall be so shielded and watched over
by your lost but still loving. BELLE."

"She was my mother! I am that child of shame!" came hoarsely from
Edith's bloodless lips as she finished reading that dreadful letter.

Then the paper slipped from her nerveless fingers, her head dropped
unconsciously upon the table before her, and she knew nothing more
until, long afterward, when she awoke from her swoon to find her lamp
gone out and the room growing cold, while her heart felt as if it had
been paralyzed in her bosom.

CHAPTER VII.

TWO NEW ACQUAINTANCES.

Edith, when consciousness returned, had not a doubt that the letters,
which she had been reading, had been penned by the hand of her own
mother; that she was that little baby who had been born in Rome--that
child of shame whose father had so heartlessly deserted it; whose
mother, her brain turned by her suffering and wrongs, had planned to
take her own life, rather than live to taint her little one's future
with the shadow of her own disgrace.

The knowledge of this seemed to blight, as with a lightning flash,
every hope of her life.

She groped her way to the bed, for she was becoming benumbed with the
cold, and threw herself upon it, utterly wretched, utterly hopeless.
For hours she lay the