"So it was all settled; and I, taking my terrible secret with me, went abroad. There is no need to linger over the details. No suspicion of the truth was ever whispered. We took Leeson into our confidence, and my baby was born in Switzerland. Ah! you look astonished. Now you know why I am here—Doris is my child!"
Earle was too bewildered for one moment to speak. Then a low cry of wonder and dismay came from his lips.
"Doris your daughter!" he repeated. "Lady Hereford, this must be a dream!"
"Would to Heaven it were!" she cried. "It is all most fatally true. Ah! me, if I could but wake up and find it a long, dark dream! When my little daughter was some weeks old, we had a letter which caused us some agitation; my father and mother were on the road to join us, and would be with us in two days. They were then at Berne.
"What shall we do?" I asked again of my clear-headed, trustworthy friend.
"As usual, she was quite ready for the emergency.
"'We must do something decisive at once,' she replied; 'send away the child to England without an hour's delay. I will telegraph to Berne to say that we have already left Interlachen, and shall be at Berne to-morrow.'
"There could be no delay. I sat down to think where it would be possible to send the little one. It seems strange to own such a thing, but I assure you that I did not feel any overwhelming affection for the child. She was lovely as a poet's dream, the fairest little cherub that was ever seen; but already in that infantile face there was a gleam of the Studleigh beauty. 'She will be like her race,' I thought, 'faithless and debonair.' Perhaps the keen anger that I felt against her father, the sorrow and the shame that he had caused me, prevented me from loving her; therefore I did not feel any sorrow at parting with her. I might have been a better woman, Earle Moray, if I had been a happier one.
"I could think of no one. Leeson suggested that if the child be taken by some farmer's wife on the estate, it would be the best thing, as in that case I would see it sometimes, and should, at least, know its whereabouts.
"Then I bethought myself how often I had heard my father speak of honest Mark Brace. The next moment the whole plan came to me. I told Leeson, and she approved of it. You have probably heard the story of the finding of Doris; there is no need for me to repeat it. It was Leeson who left the child at the farmer's gate, and waited under the shadow of the trees until it was taken indoors; it is I who send the money; and I have seen the child twice—once when she was young, and the Studleigh look in her face frightened me, although my heart yearned to her.