She looked at him with a startled face, and murmured piteously, as she clasped her little hands together:
"Good news, you say! Ah, if you have anything like that to tell me, do not wait! Let me hear it now! But, alas! what good fortune could come to me?" despondently, for the quick thought of Laurie Meredith was turned aside by the remembrance that he was dead.
Mr. Kelso seated himself on the rustic bench beside her, and said, earnestly:
"What if I should tell you that I came recently from England to seek Daisy Forrest and her descendants?"
The quivering red lips parted in wonder, but Flower did not speak, and he continued:
"I suppose you have never heard that your maternal grandfather was English?"
Her lips quivered painfully as she answered:
"No, I know nothing, except that my birth was my mother's shame, and the cause of her death."
"Poor soul!" sighed William Kelso, compassionately, then he added: "Yes, he was the younger son of a noble English family. His eldest brother was heir to the title and estates, the second brother was in the army, and John Forrest, the third and last, was designed for the church. He was young and wild, and revolted against the restraints of a clerical life, and ran away to America."
Flower sat up, listening eagerly. This began to sound like one of her favorite novels.