y.

"But you told me--" Mrs. Stewart whispered.

"Yes," interposed the young girl, "while I was in Boston I was known
simply as Edith Allen--why, I will explain to you at some other time;
but my real name is Edith Allandale."

The woman seemed turned to stone for a moment by this unexpected
revelation, so statue-like did she become, as she also realized all
that this confession embodied.

Then, as if compelled by some magnetic influence, her eyes were drawn
toward the no less statue-like man standing by that never-to-be
forgotten picture on the easel.

Their gaze met, and each read in that one brief look the conviction
that made one heart bound with joy, the other to sink with
despair--each knew that the beautiful girl, standing so wonderingly
beside that stately woman, was the child that had been born to them in
the pretty Italian villa hard by the old Roman wall which Gerald
Goddard had so faithfully reproduced upon canvas.

CHAPTER XXXV.

"THAT MAN MY FATHER!"

Isabel Stewart was the first to recover herself, when, gently linking
her arm within Edith's, she whispered, softly:

"Come with me, dear; I would like to see you alone for a few minutes."

She led her unresistingly from the room, across the hall, to a small
reception-room, when, closing the door to keep out intruders, she
turned and laid both her trembling hands upon the girl's shoulders.

"Tell me," she said, looking wistfully into her wondering eyes, "are
you the daughter of Albert and Edith Allandale?"

"Yes."

It was all the answer that Edith, in her excitement, could make.

The beautiful woman caught her breath graspingly, and every particle
of color faded from her face.

"Tell me, also," she went on, hurriedly, "did you ever hear your--your
mother speak of a friend by the name of Belle Haven?"

Edith's heart leaped into her throat at this question, and she, too,
began to tremble, as a suspicion of the truth flashed through her
mind.

"No," she said, with quivering lips, "I never heard her mention such a
person; but--"

"Yes--'but'--" eagerly repeated her companion.

"But," the fair girl continued, gravely, while she searched with a
look of pain the eyes looking so eagerly into hers, "the evening after
mamma was buried, I found some letters which had been written to her
from Rome, and which were all signed 'Belle.'"

"Oh!--"

It was a sharp cry of agony that burst from Isabel Stewart's lips.

"Oh, why did she keep th