hey call Maggie Miller has no right to that name?--that
Hagar Warren's blood is flowing in her veins?--and Madam Conway thinks
so much of that! Oh, why was Hagar left to do me this great wrong? why
did she take me from the pine-board cradle where she says I lay, and
make me what I was not born to be?" and, falling on her knees, the
wretched girl prayed that it might prove a dream from which she would
ere long awake.

Alas for thee, poor Maggie Miller! It is not a dream, but a stern
reality; and you who oft have spurned at birth and family, why
murmur now when both are taken from you? Are you not still the
same,--beautiful,--accomplished, and refined,--and can you ask for
more? Strange that theory and practice so seldom should accord. And
yet it was not the degradation which Maggie felt so keenly, it was
rather the loss of love she feared; without that the blood of royalty
could not avail to make her happy.

Maggie was a warm-hearted girl, and she loved the stately lady she had
been wont to call her grandmother with a filial, clinging love which
could not be severed, and still this love was naught compared to what
she felt for Arthur Carrollton, and the giving up of him was the
hardest part of all. But it must be done, she thought; he had told her
once that were she Hagar Warren's grandchild he should not be riding
with her--how much less, then, would he make that child his wife! and
rather than meet the look of proud disdain on his face when first she
stood confessed before him, she resolved to go away where no one had
ever heard of her or Hagar Warren. She would leave behind a letter
telling why she went, and commending to Madam Conway's care poor
Hagar, who had been sorely punished for her sin. "But whither shall I
go, and what shall I do when I get there?" she cried, trembling at
the thoughts of a world of which she knew so little. Then, as she
remembered how many young girls of her age went out as teachers, she
determined to go at all events. "It will be better than staying here
where I have no claim," she thought; and, nerving herself for the
task, she sat down to write the letter which, on the first of June,
should tell to Madam Conway and Arthur Carrollton the story of her
birth.

It was a harder task than she supposed, the writing that farewell, for
it seemed like severing every hallowed tie. Three times she wrote "My
dear grandma," then with a throb of anguish she dashed her pen across
the revered name, and