CHAPTER XX.
THE LOCKET.
Al started. Could Miss March seriously mean what she said?
"You surely do not think," the girl said, earnestly, "that I would jest on a subject so sacred?"
"No, no," Al assured her, "but what ground have you for thinking that we may be related?"
"No logical ground, perhaps," the actress replied; "but from the moment I first saw you—and I have seen you when you were not aware of my presence—I was strangely attracted to you. You may laugh at this, you may think it only the foolish fancy of a foolish girl, but it is true."
"And I, too," said Al, thoughtfully, "have had the same feeling toward you. I remember I could think of nothing but your face all the way home on the night of your first performance in Boomville. Can it really be that you are my sister, restored to me in this strange way? If she is alive she must be about your age."
"Tell me all you know about her," entreated the girl; "the circumstances under which she was lost—all. But no"—with sudden change of manner—"I will tell you my story first, if you will listen to it."
"Go on, please, Miss March."
"My first recollections are of a miserable home on the upper floor of a tenement house in New York. I lived with a hard-featured woman who called herself my aunt. Her name was Ann Thompson. Did you ever hear of her?"