Three weeks later a fair, sweet woman might have been seen driving through the street of F—— in an elegant carriage, which, with coachman and footman, had been ordered from New York, while by her side there sat a buxom, good-natured nurse, with a thriving baby on her lap.
“What a lovely child!” was the tribute of every one who saw the dainty, blue-eyed little girl, who now bore the name of Allison Porter Brewster, and then wondered to see the grave, yearning look that involuntarily came into the young mother’s eyes, even while her lips smiled at the praise bestowed upon her darling.
Meantime, messages of love and gratitude, together with costly gifts, had come across the ocean from the happy father, who was all impatience to return to his treasures.
Another month passed, and the Brewsters were once more settled in their elegant city home, where each succeeding week only served to develop the charms of the little heiress and to endear her to the hearts of her parents.
Early the following spring Miss Nancy Porter’s faithful Sarah was stricken with fever, which proved to be a long and tedious illness, during which she raved continually about stolen children and some dreadful secret which oppressed her.
Miss Porter was unremitting in her care of the trusty girl; she allowed no one to share her care of her, and when she died, in spite of the best of nursing and medical attendance, the woman shed sincere, regretful tears over her.
“I suppose it had to be,” she said sorrowfully, on her return to her lonely home after the burial. “Sarah was a good girl, and I’m sorry to lose her; but”—with suddenly whitening lips—“there’s one less in the world who knows that secret.”
The number was again reduced when, a few months later, Nancy Porter herself was laid to rest in the “Porter lot,” and the wife of Adam Brewster was left to bear her burden alone.
That it was an insupportable burden was revealed some three years afterward, when, following a gradual decline, she laid it down, after having written out a full confession of the deception of which she had been guilty, and humbly begged her husband’s pardon for having yielded to a temptation that had proved stronger than her principles.