I love you," was the reply, "and I should like to live with
you."

"All I have I would leave to you."

"But, my dear madam, I have no claim on this generosity--"

Mrs. Pryor now displayed such agitation that it was Caroline who had to
become comforter.

The sequel to this scene appeared when Caroline sank into so weak a
state that constant nursing was needed, and Mrs. Pryor established
herself at the rectory.

One day, when the watchful nurse could not forbear to weep--her full
heart overflowing--her patient asked:

"Do you think I shall not get better? I do not feel very ill--only
weak."

"But your mind, Caroline; your mind is crushed; your heart is broken;
you have been left so desolate."

"I sometimes think if an abundant gush of happiness came on me, I could
revive yet."

"You love me, Caroline?"

"Inexpressibly. I sometimes feel as if I could almost grow to your
heart."

"Then, if you love me so, it will be neither shock nor pain for you to
know that you are my own child."

"Mrs. Pryor! That is--that means--you have adopted me?"

"It means that I am your true mother."

"But Mrs. James Helstone--but my father's wife, whom I do not remember
to have seen, she is my mother?"

"She is your mother," Mrs. Pryor assured her. "James Helstone was my
husband."

"Is what I hear true? Is it no dream? My own mother! And one I can be so
fond of! If you are my mother, the world is all changed to me."

The offspring nestled to the parent, who gathered her to her bosom,
covered her with noiseless kisses, and murmured love over her like a
cushat fostering its young.

_IV.--An Old Acquaintance_

An uncle of Shirley Keeldar, Sympson by name, now came with his family
to stay at Feidhead, and accompanying them, as tutor to a crippled son
Harry, was Louis Moore, Robert's younger brother.

"Shirley," said Caroline one day as they sat in the summer-house, "you
are a singular being. I thought I knew you quite well; I begin to find
myself mistaken. Did you know that my cousin Louis was tutor in your
uncle's family before the Sympsons came down here?"

"Yes, of course; I knew it well."

"How chanced it that you never mentioned it to me?" asked Caroline. "You
knew Mrs. Pryor was my mother, and were silent, and now here again is
another secret."

"I never made it a secret; you never asked me who Henry's tutor was, or
I would have told you."

"I am puzzled about more things than one in this matter. You don't