hall ever take you
from me!"

All barriers fell, before this appeal. Laura put her arms about her
mother's neck and said:

"You are my mother, and always shall be. We will be as we have always
been; and neither this foolish talk nor any other thing shall part us or
make us less to each other than we are this hour."

There was no longer any sense of separation or estrangement between them.
Indeed their love seemed more perfect now than it had ever been before.
By and by they went down stairs and sat by the fire and talked long and
earnestly about Laura's history and the letters. But it transpired that
Mrs. Hawkins had never known of this correspondence between her husband
and Major Lackland. With his usual consideration for his wife, Mr.
Hawkins had shielded her from the worry the matter would have caused her.

Laura went to bed at last with a mind that had gained largely in
tranquility and had lost correspondingly in morbid romantic exaltation.
She was pensive, the next day, and subdued; but that was not matter for
remark, for she did not differ from the mournful friends about her in
that respect. Clay and Washington were the same loving and admiring
brothers now that they had always been. The great secret was new to some
of the younger children, but their love suffered no change under the
wonderful revelation.

It is barely possible that things might have presently settled down into
their old rut and the mystery have lost the bulk of its romantic
sublimity in Laura's eyes, if the village gossips could have quieted
down. But they could not quiet down and they did not. Day after day
they called at the house, ostensibly upon visits of condolence, and they
pumped away at the mother and the children without seeming to know that
their questionings were in bad taste. They meant no harm they only
wanted to know. Villagers always want to know.

The family fought shy of the questionings, and of course that was high
testimony "if the Duchess was respectably born, why didn't they come out
and prove it?--why did they, stick to that poor thin story about picking
her up out of a steamboat explosion?"

Under this ceaseless persecution, Laura's morbid self-communing was
renewed. At night the day's contribution of detraction, innuendo and
malicious conjecture would be canvassed in her mind, and then she would
drift into a course of thinking. As her thoughts ran on, the indignant
tears would spring to her eyes, and sh