“Don’t be so distressed, child; there is really no occasion,” said Mr. Alden soothingly. “I don’t know why, as I told Espy yesterday, you and he have taken so much trouble to hunt for the will, as, you being the only child, the law gives all to you in case your father died intestate, as it seems he did.”
She lifted her white face, which she had hidden in her hands; she would not see Espy’s imploring look.
“No, Mr. Alden, you mistake,” she said; “I, lacking the will, am not the heir.”
“Nonsense, my dear child! ’Tis you who are mistaken. Why, how could you doubt that you, his only child, inherit Mr. Kemper’s property by natural right, unless he chose to will it, or part of it, to some one else?”
She seemed shaken with contending emotions; but controlling herself by a strong effort, and looking with steady, mournful gaze into the eyes of him whom she addressed, “I thought—I believed—oh, I never doubted till the hour that I became doubly orphaned—that I was his own child and—and hers!”
She paused for an instant, with her hands tightly clasped over her heart, then went on in lower and more tremulous tones. “But she—my mother—as I must call her still—she told me with her dying breath that—that I was theirs only by adoption.”
Mr. Alden, who had been standing, staggered back and dropped into a chair, looking perfectly astounded.
“Who—who are you then?” he gasped at length.
“I—I do not know, except—”