Mrs. Stanley took the little white hand that lay on the arm of the easy chair where Lillian was sitting and holding it in her loving clasp, said, soothingly: "My darling, I did not mean at all what I said. You are too much like your father to be guilty of such unwomanly selfishness. I was a little indignant that you should persist in keeping faith with your childhood's love, and so uttered what I did not at all feel! I cannot, however, endure the thought of your going through the enemy's lines, and if he is a soldier as you hear, he may be brought to you as a prisoner of war, when you could be more speedily reunited than if you should follow out your own wild schemes."
"Pearl is not all I have in that muddle! Did I not say a husband and child? Grace has told you that I was a mother and that my pretty Lily died and was buried; but my dear Aunt, I do not believe it! I never did believe it! Still I had not the power to combat the story that was told me! O, I have been so weak! But a letter received by my mother, and which accidentally fell into my hands, and her confusion and evident alarm as I held it before her, assured me that I was the subject of a heartless fraud and that my child lived! Ever since I have pondered how I could find her! If I knew the place where she was born; at what point on the Atlantic shore stood the romantic 'Cliff House'; where I was imprisoned those dreadful weeks, I should before this have visited it. The weird old nurse would, I am sure, tell me all, notwithstanding her bribes for secrecy!"
"Surely you do not believe all this, Lillian? No wonder the hungering of your heart has eaten the bloom from your cheek! But there must be some mistake. No matter how lofty may be a mother's ambition she could not be guilty of so vile an act!"
"Auntie, my cry for months has been 'lead me in a plain path', and I have been watching for the shadows to clear away that I might see the road, and now that my plea has been seemingly answered and the 'path' winds alone through the future mysteries so distinctly to my poor, trembling vision shall I not walk therein? Indeed, I must go! I can not sit idly here with folded hands when there is so much to be done and so many links to be gathered up! My mother well understood my inertness and worthlessness; she knew too that my pride would not long allow me to be a dependent on those upon whom I only had the claims of kinship. This, she was sure, would in time bring me in humble penitence to her feet. I cannot do this; and the other path leads me farther away from her! I must go!"
True to her conclusions, in a few days Lillian Belmont, the petted child of luxury, weak and enervated by indolence and indulgence, started alone amid the protestations and pleadings of those who loved her, en route for Philadelphia where she knew another aunt, the oldest sister of her father, would give her a hearty welcome. It was a tiresome and exciting journey. Quizzing eyes were upon her everywhere; suspicious glances were thrust at her from every side, and not until she crossed the southern lines did she settle calmly down.
Mrs. Cheevers received her as one risen from the dead. Clasping the slender form in her arms she gazed long and steadfastly into the pale face without speaking. "To think it is Lillian!" she said at last. "O, if Pearl were only here! How he has loved you my child." But tears, the first that had moistened the beautiful eyes of the stricken Lillian for many weeks, were now choking her utterance, and she lay as a weary child on the tender, sympathizing breast where her poor head was pillowed. Mrs. Cheevers had known what the longings of the mother love meant. Well did she understand the hungerings of its unsatisfied greed, and as she kissed over and over again the pure white forehead she thanked God that her brother's child could nestle so closely to her empty breast!
"You can never know how peaceful I feel!" Lillian said an hour after as they sat at a well-filled board, where she was satisfying a keener appetite than she had felt for many day. "I could fly for very joy, so light and buoyant are my spirits! I have carried a burden so long that the release seems almost oppressive!"
"Poor child!" murmured the aunt, while the masculine face opposite wore an expression of the deepest sympathy.
"And to think," he said at last, "that we should have believed for a moment what those letters contained! You will, however, do me the honor, wife, to assure our little Lillian that I never did!"
"I will do you the justice to acknowledge that if it had not been for Pearl Hamilton your guilt would never have been a whit less than my own." A merry laugh followed this remark, and when it died away Lillian asked with as much calmness as she could summon if she might be permitted to examine the letters spoken of.