“My dear—” her husband caught her in his arms or she would have fallen in her eagerness. “Oh, it will all come right, but you must be patient and get stronger. There are reasons why she cannot come, or you cannot go, and you must hear the rest of the story.”
“Everett,” began his sister, “how do you know but that this is a scheme to extort money. How can you be sure it is your child? There are so many swindlers or blackmailers in the world.”
He was arranging his wife on the couch, thankful she had borne the tidings so well. Then he seated himself beside her, bending over to kiss the pallid lips.
“There can scarcely be any chance for fraud. No one would profit by it, and now, shall I go on with the story?”
They both acquiesced.
There was something so pathetic in the fostermother’s love for the child and her fear of its being cast on the world as no one seemed to know anything about the supposed mother. Then her return to her early home; her struggles against misfortune, poverty and ill health, and after a little, her dismay at finding the child so different from what she had been herself, so ambitious, so longing for refinement and showing such a distaste for common ways. The failure of her own health, the impossibility of keeping the girl at school any longer when Mrs. Barrington’s proffer had seemed a perfect godsend. But it was too late to recover the health that had been so shattered by poverty and hard work.
“Well, if it is true she was a courageous woman,” declared Miss Crawford. “One can’t forgive her for taking the child without making a single inquiry.”
“But everything was in such confusion, and you will remember that Marguerite lay unconscious for a long while, just hovering between life and death. And at that time, in the western countries there were not so many safeguards. When Dr. Kendricks reached the place, Jane and the baby had been temporarily buried. Yes, it was easy for the thing to happen when Mrs. Boyd wanted the baby so much. I can hardly forgive her, but we must admit that the confession showed an earnest desire to repair the wrong.”
“Where is she?”
“At Mrs. Barrington’s. Dr. Kendricks thinks she can last but a few days longer and the child is resolved to stay until the end. I tried to shake her determination but found it useless.”