"She is living," replied the weeping woman.
Lord Mountdean raised his face reverently to the summer sky.
"Thank Heaven!" he said, devoutly; and then added, turning to the woman--"Living and well?"
"No, not well; but she will be in time. Oh, sir, forgive me! I did wrong, perhaps, but I thought I was acting for the best."
"It was a strange 'best,'" he said, "to place a child beyond its parent's reach."
"Oh, sir," cried Margaret Dornham, "I never thought of that! She came to me in my dead child's place--it was to me as though my own child had come back again. You could not tell how I loved her. Her little head lay on my breast, her little fingers caressed me, her little voice murmured sweet words to me. She was my own child--I loved her so, sir!" and the poor woman's voice was broken with sobs. "All the world was hard and cruel and cold to me--the child never was; all the world disappointed me--the child never did. My heart soul clung to her. And then, sir, when she was able to run about, a pretty, graceful, loving child, the very joy of my heart and sunshine of my life, the doctor died, and I was left alone with her."
She paused for some few minutes, her whole frame shaken with sobs. The earl, bending down, spoke kindly to her.
"I am quite sure," he said, "that if you erred it has been through love for my child. Tell me all--have no fear."
"I was in the house, sir," she continued, "when the poor doctor was carried home dead--in his sitting-room with my--with little Madaline--and when I saw the confusion that followed upon his death, I thought of the papers in the oaken box; and, without saying a word to any one, I took it and hid it under my shawl."
"But, tell me," said the earl, kindly, "why did you do that?"