“Did she go from here alone to Cincinnati, and about what time?”
“It was in April, and must have been nineteen years ago. I know by Charlie’s age. I had hurt my ankle and Mr. Storms was going with her, but at the last something happened, I don’t remember what, and he did not go. She said a great many harsh things about her mother-in-law and sister, and about their taking her baby from her, and the night before she went was more excited than I ever saw her, but I did not think her crazy. There was no railroad then, and she went by stage, and from Cincinnati sent me a note that she was safely there and about to start for the East. I wondered a little she never wrote to me, but fancied she was with her grand friends and in her handsome house and had forgotten poor folks like us, and I would not write first. Then I had a great deal of trouble pretty soon.
“Charlie died, and Mr. Storms’ lungs gave out, and I went to Florida with him and buried him there, and after six years came back to Cynthiana. So you see there was a good deal of one thing and another to put Laura out of my mind.”
Many more questions were asked and explanations and suggestions made until it was preposterous for Magdalen to require more testimony. She was Mr. Grey’s daughter,—she believed it now, and her heart throbbed with ecstasy when she remembered Alice, whom she already loved so much. There was also a feeling of unutterable tenderness and pity for the poor crazy woman who had suddenly come up in the capacity of her mother. She could, aye, she did love her, all wrecked and shattered and imbecile as she was; but she could not so soon respond to the affection which showed itself in every lineament of Mr. Grey’s face and thrilled in the tone of his voice as he wound his arm around her neck, and drawing her closely to him said, with deep emotion:
“Magdalen, my daughter, my darling child! Heaven has been better to me than I deserved.”
He stooped and kissed her lips, but she did not give him back any answering caress, except as she suffered him to hold her in his embrace. He felt the coldness of her manner, and it affected him deeply, but there was no opportunity then for any words upon the subject. The train was coming which would take them to Cincinnati, and so after a little further conversation with Mrs. Storms, whom Mr. Grey resolved to remember in some substantial form, they bade her good-by and were soon on their way to the city.
CHAPTER XLIV.
FATHER AND DAUGHTER.
There was no longer a shadow of doubt that Mr. Grey and Magdalen bore to each other the relation of father and child. He had been satisfied with far less testimony than Magdalen required, and even she was satisfied at last, though she suggested the propriety of ascertaining from Roger if his remembrances of the woman who had left her with him tallied with Mrs. Storms’ description of Mrs. Grey as she was when she left Cynthiana. To this Mr. Grey assented, and proposed that as personal interviews were always more satisfactory than letters, Guy should go to Schodick, leaving himself and Magdalen to rest a day or so in Cincinnati, and then return to Beechwood, where Guy would join them with his report. Magdalen had half hoped he might go himself, though she knew how he must shrink from a meeting with Roger Irving, and mingled with her happiness in having found both parents and sister was a keen sense of pain as she thought how the gulf between herself and Roger was widened by the discovery of her lineage.
“Roger will hate me now, perhaps,” she said to herself, when alone in her room at the hotel she sat down to rest and tried to realize her position.