"You! you!" repeated Cecile. "You Lovedy! But no, no; you are Suzanne—you are Mme. Malet."
"Nevertheless I was—I am Lovedy Joy. I am that wicked girl who broke her mother's heart; I am that wicked girl who left her. Cecile, I am she whom you seek; you have no further search to make—poor, brave, dear little sister—I am she."
Then Lovedy put her arms round Cecile, and they mingled their tears together. The woman wept from a strong sense of remorse and pain, but the child's tears were all delight.
"And you are the Susie about whom Mammie Moseley used to fret? Oh, it seems too good, too wonderful!" said Cecile at last.
"Yes, Cecile, I left Mammie Moseley too; I did everything that was heartless and bad. Oh, but I have been unhappy. Surrounded by mercies as I have been, there has been such a weight, so heavy, so dreadful, ever on my heart."
Cecile did not reply to this. She was looking hard at the Lovedy she had come so many miles to seek—for whom she had encountered so many dangers. It seemed hard to realize that her search was accomplished, her goal won, her prize at her feet.
"Yes, Lovedy, your mother was right, you are very beautiful," she said slowly.
"Oh, Cecile! tell me about my mother," said Lovedy then. "All these years I have never dared speak of my mother. But that has not prevented my starving for her, something as poor Joe must have starved for his. Tell me all you can about my mother—-more than Alphonse told downstairs tonight."
So Cecile told the old story. Over and over again she dwelt upon that deathbed scene, upon that poor mother's piteous longing for her child, and Lovedy listened and wept as if her heart would break.
At last this tale, so sad, so bitter for the woman who was now a mother herself, came to an end, and then Lovedy, wiping her eyes, spoke: