"Marcia, I have been a husband; I am a father; my little girl—whom I have never seen—must be just about the age of Annis."
"You, Horace? you are but twenty years old!" dropping her work to look up at him in utter amazement.
"I knew you would be astonished—that you could hardly credit it—but it is true."
Then resuming his seat he poured out in impassioned language, the story already so well known to the readers of the Elsie books—of his visit to New Orleans three years before this, his hasty and clandestine marriage to the beautiful heiress, Elsie Grayson, their speedy separation by her guardian and big father, the subsequent birth of their little daughter and the death of the young mother, following so soon thereafter.
Her work forgotten, her hands lying idly in her lap, her eyes gazing intently into his, Mrs. Keith listened in almost breathless silence, the tears coursing down her cheeks during the saddest passages.
"My poor Horace! my poor, dear cousin!" she said when he had finished. "Oh, it was hard, very hard! Why did you never tell me before."
"I could not, Marcia," he answered in tremulous tones, "it is the first time I have spoken my darling's name since—since I knew that she was lost to me forever."
"Forever! oh do not say that! You have told me she was a sweet Christian girl, and none who trust in Jesus can ever be lost."
"But to me; I am no Christian," he sighed.
"But you may become one. The invitation is to you, 'Come unto me;' and the blessed assurance, 'Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out.'"