“Perhaps you need not confess the truth to your husband, if he does not already know it, but you can at least adopt Gertie, and treat her as your own, and this I beg of you to do.
“And now I have told you all I know. Who Gertie’s father was, or where he died, is a secret to me; only this is sure, the girl known as Gertie Westbrooke is your own daughter, and may God deal with you and prosper you according as you deal with her when I am gone.
“Written this day at Hampstead, and sworn to solemnly by me before the Eye which sees me, and which knows what I say is true.
Mary Rogers.”
Had Edith needed proof of Gertie’s identity, she had it in this letter, but she did not, and clasping the beautiful girl in her arms, she burst into a paroxysm of tears, moaning softly, “My darling, my baby; it seems like a dream, and God has been so good to keep you all the time and bring you at last to me. Oh, if mother could have known! She loved you from the time you went to lodge with her in London.”
“Mamma,” Gertie said suddenly, “she did know! I am sure of it, or she must have guessed. It was the night she died, when I was sitting with her, and accidentally mentioned my birthmark,—that drop of blood. I remember how excited she grew, and how hard she tried to tell me something, but could not. It must have been her suspicion of the truth.”
“Perhaps so. I would like to believe she knew it,” Edith answered, and then she told her daughter of the Lyles across the sea in Alnwick; the sweet-faced old lady, and the barearmed Jenny, who had so shocked and disgusted her. Gertie was interested in the grandmother at once, and proposed writing to her immediately, and telling her that the son whom she had mourned so long had left a child who would some day find her in her humble home, and call her grandmamma.
This plan Edith did not oppose, but before Gertie could write there came a letter from Robert Macpherson, saying that Mrs. Lyle was dead and the cottage vacant, for Mr. Nesbit had taken his wife and children to the north of Scotland, where his boyhood was passed. As Gertie had no particular interest in Jenny, her letter was not written, but through her influence provision was made for the education of Jennie’s children, especially the boy, who bore Godfrey’s name.
CHAPTER LXIV.,
AND LAST.
