No answer. Something in that awful silence made his heart grow faint and cold. He lifted his hand and swiftly, reverently removed the veil from the woman's face. With a cry of horror he recoiled from the sight. The woman was dead—dead and cold, and had been for hours!
He rushed to the door, and opening it glared wildly out into the night and darkness. There was no sign of any living creature. Doctor Lynne closed the door once more and went back to the silent figure upon the sofa. The face before him was very beautiful—a woman of some five-and-twenty years. The body was attired in handsome garments, and one hand—a beautiful white hand, with a plain gold ring upon the third finger—grasped, even in death, a tiny vial. The vial was empty, but it bore the hideous skull and crossbones, together with the significant legend: "Laudanum—poison."
Clasped in the death-cold arms lay the child, a lovely little girl; while pinned to its dainty white slip was a folded paper addressed to "Doctor Frederick Lynne." Bewildered at the strange occurrences, the physician hurriedly opened the folded paper and read these words:
"Doctor Frederick Lynne,—You have wished many a time for wealth; the chance to acquire a competence is now in your grasp. Keep this child and rear it as your own, and every year a sum of money sufficient for her support and that of your entire family shall be forwarded to you, on condition that you make no effort to discover the child's parents or antecedents. Should you attempt such a discovery the remittance will cease. But remember this, she is of good family, well-born, and legitimate. You may call her Beatrix Dane."
Accompanying the letter was a crisp one thousand-dollar bill. This was all, but surely it was enough to make the worthy physician stare in surprise.
Inquiry the next morning elicited the information that a strange man had suddenly appeared at the station the night previous and boarded the down express. The carriage had disappeared as mysteriously as it had come, no one knew whither. The whole affair was shrouded in mystery.
The coroner's inquest resulted in the verdict of "Death from laudanum, administered by some person unknown." The body was buried away in the village grave-yard, and Doctor Lynne took the infant to his humble home. It was received unwillingly enough by Mrs. Lynne—a hard-featured, high-tempered woman, who ruled her husband and household with a rod of iron; but for the sake of the money she consented reluctantly to receive the child. And so Beatrix Dane grew up to womanhood; but before she reached her seventeenth year the remittances ceased, and the black shadow of poverty brooded over the cheerless home of the Lynnes. "Troubles never come singly." So just at this juncture Doctor Lynne was stricken with partial paralysis of the limbs, which would render him an invalid for life. All the future looked gloomy and threatening, and the gaunt wolf hovered at the door of the Lynnes' humble home.