“Whew! What a highflyer, to be sure! And liberal, too! I wish I knew her name! There, she’s dropped a dainty handkerchief! Here ’tis in the corner—Dalrymple! The same woman Carey told me about. I see how it all happened now. She got out of the window, poor little Jessie, for, after all, she was a sweet, pretty girl, and went to Fifth Avenue to find the man she believed dead! Then the blizzard caught and killed her in sight of the house! I’m free to own I am sorry, for I wished her no harm, only when my nephew told me about Mr. Laurier’s angry sweetheart, I thought just as well to keep Jessie out of his way for her own good. Well, well, Carey will be coming presently, and what a fit he will be in when he learns she is dead, poor Jessie Lyndon!”
Mrs. Dalrymple drove straight to Mrs. Ryan’s house, and found the good little woman at home busy with her needle. From her she learned enough to convince her that the hapless girl was no other than her lost child.
She stayed and listened to the woman’s harrowing story, and the tears fell in torrents when she learned all that Jessie, brave little Jessie, so lovely and so ill-fated, had suffered from the ills of poverty, while her mother would have given all her millions to find her lost child, her sole heiress.
All her pride gave way before the humble little woman, who had been kind to the orphan girl, and she confessed the truth that she was Jessie’s mother, the woman from whom an angry, unforgiving husband had stolen away her heart’s idol, her little child.
Mrs. Ryan could not look into that proud, noble face, and believe she was the bad woman Mrs. Godfrey suspected. Her kind heart went out to her in sympathy, and she said:
“It’s been hard lines on yees both, lady, but yees can make it up to bonny Jessie now!”
“Did I not tell you? Alas, she is dead, my darling!” And at that moving story Mrs. Ryan’s heart was almost broken.
“You will come and see her, will you not? She looks like an angel, so fair, so pure, so peaceful!” the bereaved mother cried, on leaving, and in her gratitude for the woman’s kindness to Jessie she pressed on her a sum of money that seemed like riches itself to the toil-worn creature whose heart had kept warm and human through all the trials of pinching poverty.
Mrs. Dalrymple hastened home and found Frank and Cora together, the latter having just returned from arranging to celebrate her marriage at her cousin’s home, instead of here. She was complaining most bitterly to her lover of her aunt’s injustice, but he said impatiently:
“Cora, pray do not harp on this subject any more unless you would have me believe you heartless!”