"Mr. Lambert, something has happened to me. I—I can't think of business to-day. Will you excuse and trust me as though I were your own daughter? I want to tell you about a dear friend, the grandmother of the beautiful boy you have heard me speak about with such rapture. I promised to bring him to see you some day. That boy is a native of Madrid."
"What is the mother's name?"
"Cheriton, Mrs. Juliette Cheriton."
He shook his head thoughtfully. "I never heard the name." He laid down the paper with a little vexed and disappointed air, adding, "I haven't been in Madrid for more than eighteen years."
"It is Mrs. Cheriton's mother who is my special friend. She is one of the loveliest, most accomplished ladies I know, and such an earnest Christian, too."
"Is her name Cheriton?"
"Oh, no! Eugene's mother is her daughter. She calls herself Douglass."
"Douglass!" Mr. Lambert started forward, then sank back and looked as though he had been struck. Presently, with his hand on his heart, he said in a choking voice,—
"Tell me all you know. Don't spare me. This suspense is killing me."
"I will tell you all, though I can only suspect the truth. Mrs. Douglass, as my friend chooses to be called, told me this was not her wedded name. Just before her daughter's birth, painful family circumstances arose, which caused a separation between herself and her husband. She has never seen him since."