Miss Fernly drew back, shocked and pained.
"You must not wish for anything like that to happen," she said, "for God might take you at your word."
For ten long and weary days the hapless young mother lay with her face to the wall, crying out to Heaven to take her and her baby from this cruel world.
In great fear, the doctor had taken charge of the little one, and conveyed it to a near-by foundling asylum. Its presence seemed to irritate the hapless young mother, who was already in a high fever.
Miss Fernly called every day at the cottage, to see how her latest charge was progressing.
She had taken a strange interest in the girl whose identity seemed shrouded in such profound mystery.
[CHAPTER XXIV.]
The beautiful girl lying so ill under Miss Fernly's care grew steadily worse. Her constant cry for the little one was most pitiful to hear.