so; and he
loves me, oh, so much!"

The other woman smiled. "It is not so strange to love, nor yet to be
loved. And all lovers are handsome and brave and fond."

"That is not all of my story. He wants to marry me." Clara paused, as if
to let this statement impress itself upon the other.

"True lovers always do," said the elder woman.

"But sometimes, you know, there are circumstances which prevent them."

"Ah yes," murmured the other reflectively, and looking at the girl with
deeper interest, "circumstances which prevent them. I have known of such
a case."

"The circumstance which prevents us from marrying is my story."

"Tell me your story, child, and perhaps, if I cannot help you otherwise,
I can tell you one that will make yours seem less sad."

"You know me," said the young woman, "as Miss Hohlfelder; but that is
not actually my name. In fact I do not know my real name, for I am not
the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Hohlfelder, but only an adopted child.
While Mrs. Hohlfelder lived, I never knew that I was not her child. I
knew I was very different from her and father,--I mean Mr. Hohlfelder. I
knew they were fair and I was dark; they were stout and I was slender;
they were slow and I was quick. But of course I never dreamed of the
true reason of this difference. When mother--Mrs. Hohlfelder--died, I
found among her things one day a little packet, carefully wrapped up,
containing a child's slip and some trinkets. The paper wrapper of the
packet bore an inscription that awakened my curiosity. I asked father
Hohlfelder whose the things had been, and then for the first time I
learned my real story.

"I was not their own daughter, he stated, but an adopted child.
Twenty-three years ago, when he had lived in St. Louis, a steamboat
explosion had occurred up the river, and on a piece of wreckage floating
down stream, a girl baby had been found. There was nothing on the child
to give a hint of its home or parentage; and no one came to claim it,
though the fact that a child had been found was advertised all along the
river. It was believed that the infant's parents must have perished in
the wreck, and certainly no one of those who were saved could identify
the child. There had been a passenger list on board the steamer, but the
list, with the officer who kept it, had been lost in the accident. The
child was turned over to an orphan asylum, from which within a year it
was adopted by the two kind-hearted and childless Ge