tell you."

"And yet you knew that somewhere in this cruel world my little child
was living--my tender, little fair-haired child--while I, her father,
was wearing my life out with the grief of that terrible double loss.
Oh, woman, woman, may God forgive you, for I never can, if your words
be true."

"I feared such anger as this; that is why I dared not tell you," she
whispered, faintly. "I appeal to your respect for me in the past to
hear me, to your promise of forgiveness to shield me, to your love for
the little child to listen calmly while I have strength to speak."

He saw she was right. His head seemed on fire, and his heart seemed
bursting with the acute intensity of his great excitement.

He must listen while she had strength to tell him of his child.

"Go on--go on!" he cried, hoarsely, burying his face in the
bed-clothes; "tell me of my child!"

"You remember the terrible storm, master, how the tree moaned, and
without against the western wing--where your beautiful young wife lay
dead, with the pretty, smiling, blue-eyed babe upon her breast?"

"Yes, yes--go on--you are driving me mad!" he groaned.

"You remember how you fell down senseless by her bedside when we told
you the terrible news--the young child-bride was dead?"

She knew, by the quivering of his form, he heard her.

"As they carried you from the room, master, I thought I saw a woman's
form gliding stealthily on before, through the dark corridors. A blaze
of lightning illumined the hall for one brief instant, and I can swear
I saw a woman's face--a white, mocking, gloriously beautiful
face--strangely like the face of your first wife, master, Pluma's
mother. I knew it could not be her, for she was lying beneath the
sea-waves. It was not a good omen, and I felt sorely afraid and
greatly troubled. When I returned to the room from which they had
carried you--there lay your fair young wife with a smile on her
lips--but the tiny babe that had slumbered on her breast was gone."

"Oh, God! if you had only told me this years ago," cried the unhappy
father. "Have you any idea who could have taken the child? It could
not have been for gain, or I should have heard of it long ago. I did
not know I had an enemy in the wide world. You say you saw a woman's
face?" he asked, thoughtfully.

"It was the ghost of your first wife," asserted the old housekeeper,
astutely. "I never saw her face but once; but there was something
about it one could not easily