One summer, when little Virgie was nine years of age, they went for a week or two to Niagara Falls. Virgie had never visited the place, and she promised herself a rare treat in studying nature there in all its grandeur, and in making some sketches for the coming winter’s work.
She reached the village late in the day, and was driven directly to one of the principal hotels, where she ordered a couple of rooms—for she had a maid with her—and then stepped to the office to register.
After she had done so she carelessly glanced over some of the preceding pages to see who were guests in the house.
At the top of one of the pages, and under the date of a week previous, she saw three names that sent every drop of blood back upon her heart and turned her giddy and faint.
“William Heath and wife. Master Willie Heath and maid,” she read, and every letter seemed as if it had been branded in characters of fire upon her brain.
CHAPTER III.
VIRGIE SHALL YET HAVE HER INHERITANCE.
Could it be possible that the man who had been her husband had come again to this country, accompanied by the woman who had supplanted her?
They had a child too, it seemed, a young heir, and they were all underneath the same roof with her.
For a moment she was dazed with the knowledge; then she was tempted to dash the pen through her own name and fly to some other place.
But she did not like to make herself conspicuous; even now the clerk had noticed her emotion, and was asking her if she was faint and would like a glass of water. So she braced herself to face whatever might come, though she felt as if it would kill her to meet the man who had once called her wife.