"I do not remember you," she said, gently--"I have never seen you before."
"My poor child," he returned, in a tone so full of tenderness and pain that she was startled by it, "this is hard!"
"You cannot be the gentleman I used to see sometimes in the early home that I only just remember, who used to amuse me by showing me his watch and take me out for drives?"
"No. I never saw you. Madeline as a child--I left you when you were three or four days old. I have never seen you since, although I have spent a fortune almost in searching for you."
"You have?" she said, wonderingly. "Who then are yon?"
"That is what I want to tell you without startling you, Madaline--dear Heaven, how strange it seems to utter that name again! You have always believed that good woman who has just quitted the room to be your mother?"
"Yes, always," she repeated, wonderingly.
"And that wretched man, the convict, you have always believed to be your father?"
"Always," she repeated.
"Will it pain or startle you very much to hear that they are not even distantly related to you--that the woman was simply chosen as your foster mother because she had just lost her own child?"