“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 last two years. She so dreaded leaving me alone in the world, and I am not willing to embitter her last moments. You see she never thought of my parents being in a much higher walk in life, and the knowledge that she had kept me out of so much would be a cruel stab. No, let me wait until it is all over, and you have accepted the strange story truly. There are others beside yourself——”
Her eyes were full of tears as she raised them. It was noble to take this view, though he really grudged it.
“You mean then to stay here until—”