“Oh, father! if it should be my baby!”
“My dear, dear child,” said Mr. Dinneford, putting his arms about Edith and holding her tightly, “you torture yourself with a wild dream. The thing is impossible.”
“It is somebody's baby,” sobbed Edith, her face on her father's breast, “and it may be mine. Who knows?”
“We will do our best to find it,” returned Mr. Dinneford, “and then do what Christian charity demands. I am in earnest so far, and will leave nothing undone, you may rest assured. The police have the mayor's instructions to find the baby and give it into my care, and I do not think we shall have long to wait.”
An ear they thought not of, heard all this. Mrs. Dinneford's suspicions had been aroused by many things in Edith's manner and conduct of late, and she had watched her every look and word and movement with a keenness of observation that let nothing escape. Careful as her husband and daughter were in their interviews, it was impossible to conceal anything from eyes that never failed in watchfulness. An unguarded word here, a look of mutual intelligence there, a sudden silence when she appeared, an unusual soberness of demeanor and evident absorbed interest in something they were careful to conceal, had the effect to quicken all Mrs. Dinneford's alarms and suspicions.
She had seen from the top of the stairs a brief but excited interview pass between Edith and her father as the latter stood in the vestibule that morning, and she had noticed the almost wild look on her daughter's face as she hastened back along the hall and ran up to her room. Here she stayed alone for over an hour, and then came down to the parlor, where she remained restless, moving about or standing by the window for a greater part of the morning.
There was something more than usual on hand. Guilt in its guesses came near the truth. What could all this mean, if it had not something to do with the cast-off baby? Certainty at last came. She was in the dining-room when Edith ran down to meet her father in the hall, and slipped noiselessly and unobserved into one of the parlors, where, concealed by a curtain, she heard everything that passed between her husband and daughter.
Still as death she stood, holding down the strong pulses of her heart. From the hall Edith and her father turned into one of the parlors—the same in which Mrs. Dinneford was concealed behind the curtain—and sat down.
“It had large brown eyes?” said Edith, a yearning tenderness in her voice.
“Yes, and a finely-formed bead, showing good parentage,” returned the father.