“My mother?”
“She is your mother, and was once my wife; for, as truly as there is a God to bless you, Mary, I am your father, not in name alone, but in the sight of Heaven.”
Mary was not even surprised, she could not remember the time when the man supposed to be her father had been half so dear as the one before her. She reached out her hand, took that outstretched by the missionary, and, bending forward, kissed it with tender reverence.
“My father!”
The word never sounded so holy and sweet before; tears swelled to the missionary’s eyes; a drop or two trembled on Mary’s lashes, and froze as they fell away like pearls thrown up by the troubled waters of her heart.
“And now may I talk of my mother?—my mother,” she repeated, with a gush of ineffable tenderness—“that is a new word.”
“It is a holy name, my daughter; when you were born it kept me from thinking if the angels had any music as sweet.”
“But my mother? I cannot understand—Jane—my grandmother?”
“They have been very kind, and Jane believes you to be her sister. The old woman kept my secret faithfully; Derwent was my loyal friend to the last.”
“But why was it a secret—why did this lady, my mother, let me live all these years and never speak to me but once?”