in your
heart that tells you you are standing in your mother's presence?"

"Every instinct in my heart tells me you are a vile impostor, woman. I
wonder that you dare intimate such a thing. You are certainly an
escaped lunatic. My mother was lost at sea long years ago."

"So every one believed. But my very presence here is proof positive
such was not the case."

Pluma tried to speak, but no sound issued from her white lips. The
very tone of the woman's voice carried positive conviction with it. A
dim realization was stealing over her that this woman's face, and the
peculiar tone of her voice, were strangely mixed up with her childhood
dreams; and, try as she would to scoff at the idea, it seemed to be
gaining strength with every moment.

"You do not believe me, I see," pursued the woman, calmly. "There is
nothing but the stern facts that will satisfy you. You shall have
them. They are soon told: Years ago, when I was young and fair as you
are now, I lived at the home of a quiet, well-to-do spinster, Taiza
Burt. She had a nephew, an honest, well-to-do young fellow, who
worshiped me, much to the chagrin of his aunt; and out of pique one
day I married him. I did not love the honest-hearted fellow, and I
lived with him but a few brief months. I hated him--yes, hated him,
for I had seen another--young, gay and handsome--whom I might have won
had it not been for the chains which bound me. He was a handsome,
debonair college fellow, as rich as he was handsome. This was Basil
Hurlhurst, the planter's only son and heir. Our meeting was romantic.
I had driven over to the village in which the college was situated, on
an errand for Taiza. Basil met me driving through the park. He was
young, reckless and impulsive. He loved me, and the knowledge of his
wealth dazzled me. I did not tell him I was a wife, and there
commenced my first sin. My extreme youth and ignorance of the world
must plead for me--my husband or the world would never know of it. I
listened to his pleading, and married him--that is, we went through
the ceremony. He had perfect faith in its sincerity. I alone knew the
guilty truth. Yet enormous as was my crime, I had but a dim
realization of it.

"For one brief week I was dazzled with the wealth and jewels he
lavished upon me; but my conscience would not let me rest when I
thought of my honest-hearted husband, from whom I had fled and whom I
had so cruelly deceived.

"My love for Basil was short lived; I was t