"Tell me all," she said. "Begin at the beginning. Here, drink this—it is wine."
She had brought a pocket-flask with her. She filled a broken tea-cup and held it to the dry, parched lips.
Miriam drained it eagerly.
"Ah!" she said, "that is new life! Sit down here by me, Mollie, where I can see you; give me your hands. Now listen:
"Mollie, you are eighteen years old, though neither you nor Carl Walraven thinks so. You are eighteen this very month. His child, whom he thinks you are, would be almost seventeen, if alive. She died when a babe of two years old.
"Eighteen years ago, Mollie, I was a happy wife and mother. Down in Devonshire, in the little village of Steeple Hill, my husband and I lived, where we had both been born, where we had courted and married, where we hoped to lay our bones at last. Alas and alas! he fills a bloody grave in the land of strangers, and I am drawing my last breath in far America. And all, Mollie—all owing to Carl Walraven."
She paused a moment. The girl held the cup of wine to her lips. A few swallows revived her, and enabled her to go on.
"There were two brothers, James and Stephen Dane. James, the elder by six years, was my husband and your father. We lived in the old Dane homestead—we three—a happy and prosperous household. We needed but your coming, my daughter, to fill our cup of joy to the very brim. No woman in all broad England was a happier wife and mother than Miriam Dane when you were laid upon my breast.
"We named our baby-girl Miriam—your father would have it so—and you grew healthful and beautiful, fair and blue-eyed, as it is in the nature of the Danes to be. I was glad you had not my black eyes and gypsy skin. I think I loved you all the more because you were your father's image.
"Ah, Mollie, I never can tell you what a blessed, peaceful household we were until you were three months old! Then the first change took place—Stephen Dane got married.