"Merciful God, have pity!" shrilled over the girl's tortured lips, as she sank on her knees, overcome by the horror of her thoughts.
Her child—Love Ellsworth's lawful heir—to be born in a home for "girls gone astray," and placed in a foundlings' home, to be "adopted by some good people." Had she come to this? She, whose future had promised so radiantly nine brief months ago! A wild prayer to Heaven broke from her pallid lips:
"Oh, God! take us both—the forsaken mother and child—to heaven!"
"It's too late to take on now. Better behaved yourself right at first," the old maid admonished her; adding, soothingly: "Go to bed now, and I'll send to-morrow for the good doctor to come and take you to the lying-in hospital."
But in the gray dawn of the cold morning she found the bed empty, and poor Dainty gone.
CHAPTER XXXV.
GRAND COMPANY.
A strange chance, or, perhaps, a kindly Providence, brought Sarah Ann Peters and old black mammy together that spring at the railway station near Ellsworth, where both were then living.
The indefatigable white woman was laid low with la grippe, and her husband, in seeking a maid-of-all-work to fill her place, could find no one to take the situation but the aged Virginia.