to me."

"How strange!" murmured Edith.

"It was the motherly instinct reaching out after its own," was the
tender response. "But, about my finding the certificate: You remember
you offered to put the rooms in order, if I would sew for you
meanwhile?"

"Yes."

"Well, that was the time that I learned where that precious paper
could be found," and then she proceeded to relate the conversation
that she had overheard between Mr. and Mrs. Goddard, and how,
emboldened by it, she had afterward gone to the room of the latter to
find her in the act of examining the very document she wanted.

She also told how, later, she had gone, by herself, to the room and
deliberately taken possession of it.

She also mentioned the incident that had occurred on the same day in
the dining-room, when Mr. Goddard had knocked her glasses off and
seemed so disconcerted upon looking into her eyes.

"He appeared like one who had suddenly come face to face with some
ghost of his past--as indeed he had," she concluded, with a sigh.

"I do not see how it can be possible for him to have known one
peaceful moment since the day of his desertion of you in Rome," Edith
remarked, with a grave, thoughtful face.

"I do not think he has," said her mother. "No one can be really at
peace while leading a life of sin and selfish indulgence. I would
rather, a thousand times, have lived my life, saddened and
overshadowed by a great wrong and a lasting disgrace--as I have
believed it to be--than to have exchanged places with either Gerald
Goddard or Anna Correlli."

"How relieved you must have been when you met Mr. Forsyth and learned
that your marriage had been a legal one," Edith observed, while she
uttered a sigh of gratitude as she realized that thus all reproach had
also been removed from her.

"Indeed I was, love; but more on your account than mine. And I
immediately returned to America to prove it, and then reveal to my
dear old friend, Edith, the fact that no stigma rested upon the birth
of the child whom she had so nobly adopted as her own. Poor Edith! I
loved her with all my heart," interposed the fair woman, with starting
tears. "I wish I might have seen her once more, to bless her, from the
depths of my grateful soul, for having so sacredly treasured the jewel
that I committed to her care. If I could but have known two years
earlier, and found her, she never need have suffered the privations
which I am sure hastened her untimely death. You,