“You have in your family,” said the stranger, after seating herself, “a girl named Ida.”
Mrs. Crump looked up suddenly and anxiously. Could it be that the secret of Ida's birth was to be revealed at last!
“Yes,” she said.
“Who is not your child.”
“But whom I love as such; whom I have always taught to look upon me as a mother.”
“I presume so. It is of her that I wish to speak to you.”
“Do you know anything of her parentage?” inquired Mrs. Crump, eagerly.
“I was her nurse,” said the other, quietly.
Mrs. Crump examined, anxiously, the hard features of the woman. It was a relief at least to know, though she could hardly have believed, that there was no tie of blood between her and Ida.
“Who were her parents?”