"I am looking for a lady and her daughter," said the man distinctly, "the lady is my sister whom I have not seen in twenty years. She is a widow, and her name is Mrs. Adelaide Marvin."
With a gasp of horror Faith staggered back into the room just as her mother sprang forward with a joyous greeting.
"Oh, Charles, my brother!" she cried, falling on his shoulder. "How I have longed to see you, you naughty boy, every day since you ran away from us in dear old England!"
CHAPTER XXX.
THE UNEXPECTED FORTUNE.
The next act of Faith's was one of noble heroism. In that moment of misery she forced herself to think only of her mother, thus ignoring her own position in the matter entirely.
Without a word she walked back into the kitchen, leaving brother and sister together, and taking little Dick in her lap, tried to think the matter over as calmly as possible.
It was an embarrassing position, look at it as she would, but not so much for herself as for the man whom she now knew to be her own uncle.
As the moments passed she heard her mother's voice grow more and more pleading, and although she could not hear what was being said, she conjectured rightly that she was urging her brother to accede to something, while he as steadily refused the accession.