closed
the door after her.

"I've really got to tell you what is on my mind," she said. "And I am
sure that you will look on it as a confidence. You know the asylum
where I have been is not far from Utica, where Josephine went when she
was married. Well, one day, about a fortnight after I got there, I had
occasion to look up the record of a child in the books, and my
attention was attracted by a name the same as Josephine's. The
coincidence struck me, and I read the record that on a certain day,
which as near as I could calculate, must have been a year after
Josephine left, a person of her name, written down as a widow, a
member of the Orthodox Church, had adopted a male child a few months
old. I was interested. I did not suspect anything, but I asked the
assistant matron if she remembered the case. She did, clearly. She
said the woman was a dear little thing, who had come there shortly
before, a young widow, a seamstress. She was a lonely little thing,
and some one connected with the asylum had given her work, which she
had done so well that she soon had all she needed. She had been
employed in the asylum, and loved children as they did her. The child
in question was the son of a woman who had died at its birth, from the
shock of an accident which had killed the father. It took a fancy to
Josephine, and she wanted to adopt it. The committee took the matter
up. The clergyman spoke well of her, as did every one, and they all
decided that she was perfectly able to care for it. So she took the
child. All of a sudden, one day, Josephine went, as she had come.
There was no mystery about it. She told the clergyman that she was
homesick for her old friends, and had gone east, and would write, and
she always has.

"Of course I was puzzled. There was no doubt in my mind that it was
our little Josephine. Naturally I was discreet. Luckily. I spoke of
her to several people who remembered her, and they all called her
'dear little Josephine' just as we had. I talked of her with the
clergyman and his wife. I asked questions that were too natural to
rouse suspicions, when I told them that I knew her, that the baby was
the dearest and happiest child I knew, and what do you suppose I found
out, more by inference than facts?"

No need to ask me. Didn't I know?

Josephine had never been married. There had never been any "He." It
all seemed so natural. It did not shock me, as it had the Matron, and
I was glad she had told no one but