Kate inclined her head in assent.
“From what I know of you then, my dear young lady, and from the kind countenance I see you bestowing on the child, you will rejoice to hear that the fraud, so basely attempted on her mother, utterly failed.”
“What!” cried our heroine, with sparkling eyes, clasping her hands in joy. “Can it be possible?”
“Never was there wife, if that poor girl, whose father I knew in England, was not legally wedded to the late Charles Aylesford, Esquire.”
“Thank God!” ejaculated Kate, fervently.
“Yes! we may well thank the Almighty one,” reverently replied the clergyman; “for out of evil counsel he brought good. But I must explain. It happened in this way.”
The rector then proceeded to state that, a few months before the Aylesfords arrived in Philadelphia, he had been summoned, one evening, to the bedside of a dying man in one of the miserable taverns then, and still existing, by the water-side. The invalid was undergoing the most terrible agonies of remorse, having, on his own confession, lived a life of the greatest depravity for many preceding years. He had been, he said, originally a clergyman of the Church of England, had been left a small fortune, and had graduated at Trinity College, Cambridge. But, having fallen into evil courses, through his fondness for company and wine, he had gradually been excluded from the society he was born for, and, finally, had been obliged to fly to America to escape the vengeance of the law. In the colonies he had met Arrison, had become a confederate in his villainies, and had consented to be the tool of Aylesford and him in the clandestine marriage of Miss Rowan. Neither of his employers, however, were aware of his true clerical character; but supposed his assumption of the robes was only a cleverly managed disguise. Nor was this all. Abandoned as he was, the fallen clergyman had still some conscience left, so that he secretly procured the documents necessary to render the marriage a valid one, in all respects. Subsequently he had left Philadelphia, and had remained absent for years, having only returned, in the last stage of a consumption, a few weeks before sending for the rector. A principal object of his coming back, he confessed, was the desire to make reparation for the great wrong he had done Mistress Rowan. Nothing in his whole career, though he acknowledged to being stained with the blackest crimes, had ever affected him, he said, like his share in that treacherous transaction. He had just succeeded in tracing the poor victim, in discovering that she had been abandoned by her husband, and in ascertaining that she died after a few years of toil and shame, when his disease assumed so violent a character that he was unable to prosecute further inquiries. What had become of the child, whether it was dead or living, he had been unable to ascertain. In this extremity, tormented by restless anguish, he had sent for the rector of Christ Church, and placing in the good clergyman’s hands the proofs of the legality of the marriage, enjoined him to endeavor to discover the fate of the orphan. Having done this, he seemed more at ease, and expired the same night, shortly after the rector had departed.
“As soon as you came to town, and I saw your little cousin in your pew, I felt that the lost child was discovered,” continued the clergyman. “But it was not until I had more certainly ascertained that she was really your blood-connection, that I ventured to take the present liberty.”
It now became necessary to acquaint Mrs. Warren with Maggy’s real parentage, and consequently with one of those transactions in her nephew’s life which had been studiously concealed from her. It was, at first, a terrible shock to the poor creature. But after awhile she became more reconciled to it, finding those excuses which simple, loving hearts like hers always will. It had the beneficial effect, in the end, of making her almost worship little Maggy, whom heretofore she had treated, as we have seen, with comparative indifference. The orphan now came in for the love that had been lavished on Aylesford, and Mrs. Warren entered eagerly into all Kate’s plans for the instruction of Maggy; but especially did the good lady interest herself in what she called the “domestic” education of the child, saying naively to her protege; “my dear, as every woman’s proper destiny is to be a wife, and to be happy as a wife, it is indispensable that you should know how to prepare a good table for your husband, as all men like good eating, and can indeed be best kept in humor by tickling their palates.” This remark was the nearest approach to wit which the dowager ever made; and was slyly quoted to Major Gordon by Kate, as a commentary on his sex.
No one could have progressed with greater rapidity in her studies than did Maggy. Perhaps it is a mistake, into which modern times have fallen, that they put children to school too soon; for, if the young intellect was left unvexed awhile longer, it would probably learn all the quicker when once it began. Certainly, little Maggy, who, at ten years old, could read with difficulty, made the most astonishing progress, so that, by the time she was fourteen, no young lady of her age could boast of so many acquirements. The superior education which Kate herself had received was doubtless of benefit to the child, because it enabled our heroine to impart much instruction not then taught in American schools. In music Maggy had an exquisite ear, while her voice was one of great promise. To hear her sing the simple ballads, then so popular, often brought tears into the eyes of the listeners. It is a strange sight to see such effects produced in our days; but it would be heretical nevertheless to say that we ought to give up opera music in parlors, and return to the artless, plaintive song; for of course we are wiser in this, as in other things, than our ancestors; and it is quite absurd to think that there can be music unless the windows shake, the piano shudders as if in an ague fit, and the dear, sweet performer, opens her month as if she was about to swallow music sheets, instruments and all.