As she spoke her whole frame quivered, and she made as though she would have withdrawn her hand and risen to her feet. Mrs. Burton tightened her grasp upon the fluttering hand in her lap, and gently restrained the agitated girl.
“I haven’t finished yet, dear,” she said. “You know the saying that ‘many a true word is spoken in jest’?”
“Yes, yes——”
“Well—try to be calm, my child—it has been found out——”
“I know what you are going to say, mother,” broke in the young girl. “It is that I have found my father—my very own; though I can never forget the only father I have known these years, and I haven’t found another mother, and don’t want to.”
Then the woman and the child—for she was little more—became locked in a close embrace. After some minutes, Mrs. Burton unclasped the young arms from her neck, and, sitting hand in hand with her adopted daughter, she told her all the wondrous tale.
“So you see, my child,” she concluded, “your name is not Owen after all; it is not even Mary Ann.”
“No,” said the girl, with a bewitching touch of scorn. “Mary Ann Owen, forsooth! I always had my doubts. Horn is not much better in itself. But it is my father’s name; and Marian is all that could be desired. And so I really am that little Marian of whom I have heard so many charming things! How sweet! But, mother, you must be the very same to me as ever; and I must find room for two fathers now, instead of one.”
“Yes, my dear, I feel sure you will not love us any the less for this great change.”
“Mother, mother, never speak of that again! If it had not been for you, I might never have come to know anything about myself, to say nothing of all the dreadful things which might have happened. Oh, God is good!”