Her parents died, and their large fortune fell to her, the only surviving child. Then she took her orphan niece, Cora Ellyson, into her home and heart.
But in no sense could Cora fill the lost child’s place. She was passionate, self-willed, imperious, and ungrateful. Her aunt wearied of her often, despairing of any congeniality between them, and secretly anxious that Cora should marry and thus remove to another home.
Then came the episode of Jessie Lyndon, the wonderful likeness that startled Mrs. Dalrymple, and the discovery of the family birthmark on the young girl’s breast.
Swiftly the links were fastened in the chain that proved the dead girl to be the stolen child, recovered only in death.
It was cruel, cruel! The woman’s heart so long on the rack of suspense almost broke beneath the awful strain of hope’s decay.
After Jessie’s death and Cora’s accident no one thought it strange that she gave up society, draping herself in the deepest mourning garb.
In her restless mood before finding Jessie she had promised to marry a titled Englishman, who, meeting her abroad, had followed her home to plead his suit.
Now she abruptly canceled this engagement, to the despair of her suitor, who adored her beauty as much as he did her millions.
Her heart had never been in it. No man had touched that since she had been parted from her husband, but she had thought to fill up her empty life with gratified vanity, to wear the tiara of a duchess.
Her heart revolted, and she realized that she would do her lover wrong to give him the hand without the heart.