They sat down side by side on the bed, like two sisters, and wept like little children for a while; then Daisy wiped her eyes, and said, piteously:
"Oh, Miss Carew, can you ever forgive me?"
"It was not your fault, Daisy, darling. But you must call me Kathleen; you know we are not strangers to each other. I know all about you. I have lived at your home, slept in your pretty room, and—can you ever forgive me, dear?—I read your sweet diary! I was so lonely and so curious over the girl whose identity had become mixed with mine."
"It was very silly, was it not?—that is all I regret about it," Daisy Lynn answered, blushing crimson. Then she looked fearlessly into Kathleen's eyes as she added: "But I am cured now. I despise him. I could not love him now if he begged me on his knees!"
"I am glad of that, dear, for he was not worthy of you," said Kathleen, fervently.
"You know him?" cried the other girl, in surprise, and then Kathleen told her all about her wicked step-brother.
She was rejoiced to see how disgusted Daisy Lynn became with the accomplished villain who had once been the hero of her girlish dreams.
"But, Daisy, tell me where you have been all this time?" said Kathleen, curiously; and Daisy smiled as she answered:
"Most of the time with an old couple in the country, to whose lonely little house I wandered that night after I escaped from my keeper and wandered into the woods. You see, Kathleen, I was not violently insane, only sort of melancholy mad for a while; and because I foolishly attempted to poison myself, an incompetent physician pronounced me mad, and persuaded my aunt to send me to a lunatic asylum. Well, in my horror and grief I confided my cruel distress to those good old people, and they believed me and pitied me. They let me stay with them, and were as good to me as if they had been my parents. A few months ago the good old man died, and his gentle old wife soon followed him to the grave. Then the little farm passed into the ownership of a distant connection of theirs, Lawyer Perkins, of Richmond. He employed me to teach his children."
She went on then and told Kathleen how strangely the detective had found her, and all that had happened afterward.