"Miriam!"
"Not one drop! If there did, you should not now be standing by my death bed. I would expire unrepenting and unconfessed. Mollie, you are mine—my very own—my daughter!"
She raised herself on her elbow and caught Mollie in her arms with a sudden, fierce strength. The girl stood perfectly speechless with the shock.
"My child—my child—my child! For years I have hungered and thirsted for this hour. I have desired it as the blind desire sight. My child—my child! have you no word for your dying mother?"
"Mother!"
The word broke from Mollie's white lips like a sobbing sigh. The intense surprise of the unexpected revelation stunned her.
"You believe me, then—you do believe me!" Miriam cried, holding her fast.
"You are dying," was Mollie's solemn answer. "Oh, my mother! why did you not tell me this before?"
"Because I would not disgrace you and drag you down. I loved you far too well for that. I could have done nothing for you but bespatter you with the mire in which I wallowed, and I wanted you, my beautiful one—my pearl, my lily—to be spotless as mountain snow. It can do you no harm to know when I am dead."
"And Carl Walraven is nothing to me?"