em?" she went on, wildly; "how could she have
been so unwise? Why--why did she not destroy them?"

At these words a light so eager, so beautiful, so tender that it
seemed to transfigure her, suddenly illumined Edith's face, for they
confirmed, beyond a doubt, the suspicion and hope that had been
creeping into her heart.

"Tell me--are you that 'Belle'?" she whispered, bending nearer to her
with gleaming eyes.

"Oh, do not ask me!" cried the unhappy woman, a bitter sob escaping
her.

She had never dreamed of anything so dreadful as that those fatal
letters would fall into the hands of her child, to prejudice her and
make her shrink from her with aversion.

She had planned, if she was ever so fortunate as to find her, and had
to reveal her history to her, to smooth over all that would be likely
to shock her--that she would never confess to her how despair had
driven her to the verge of that one crime upon which she now looked
back with unspeakable horror.

The thought that this beautiful girl knew all, and believed the
worst--as she could not fail to do, she reasoned, after reading the
crude facts mentioned in those letters--filled her with shame and
grief: for how could she ever eradicate those first impressions, and
win the love she so craved?

Thus she was wholly unprepared for what followed immediately upon her
indirect acknowledgment of her identity.

The gentle girl, her expressive face radiant with mingled joy, love,
sympathy, slipped both arms around her companion's waist, and dropping
her head upon her shoulder, murmured, fondly:

"Ah, I am sure you are!--I am sure that I have found my mother, and--I
am almost too happy to live."

"Child! my own darling! Is it possible that you can thus open your
heart of hearts to me?" sobbed the astonished woman, as she clasped
the slight form to her in a convulsive embrace.

"Oh, yes--yes; I have longed for you, with longing unspeakable, ever
since I knew," Edith murmured, tremulously.

"Longed for me? Ah, I never dared to hope that Heaven could be so
kind. I feared, love, that you would despise me, as a weak and willful
woman, even after I should tell you all my story, with its extenuating
circumstances; but now, while knowing and believing only the worst,
you take me into the arms of your love, and own me--your mother!"

She broke down utterly at this point, and both, clasped in each
other's embrace, sobbed in silent sympathy for a few moments.

"Well, dea