oing I could have won his
heart. I consented to have you in the family, provided that you should be
reared as his niece, and never be told of your parentage. He replied,
with exceeding bitterness, that he was not anxious that his child should
grow up to hate her father for his lack of faith in her mother, and his
deep injustice to her.

"We went to San Francisco to live, but I hated you even more bitterly
than I had hated your mother, and every caress which I saw my husband
lavish upon you was like a poisoned dagger in my heart. But he never
knew it--he never knew that I had had anything to do with the tragedy
of his life, until more than a year after our marriage.

"My own child--a little girl--was born about ten months after that event;
but she did not live, and this only served to make me more bitter against
you; for, although my husband professed to feel great sorrow that she
could not have lived to be a comfort to us and a companion to you, I knew
that he would never have loved her with the peculiar tenderness which he
always manifested toward you.

"When your mother fled from him and Paris she left everything that he
had lavished upon her save what clothing she needed and money to defray
necessary expenses during the next few months; and so after my marriage
I found pocketed away among some old clothing belonging to my husband the
keepsakes that he had given to her and also their marriage certificate.
I took possession of them, for I resolved that if you should outlive your
father you should never have anything to prove that you were his child;
if I could not have my husband's heart I would at least have his money.

"One day a little over a year after our marriage, on my return from a
drive, I was told that a man was waiting in the library to see me.
Without a suspicion of coming evil, I went at once to ascertain his
errand, and was horrified to find there the butler--the man whom I had
hired to act as your mother's escort to London. He had been hunting for
me for three years to extort more money from me, and had finally traced
me from New York to San Francisco.

"He demanded another large sum from me. It was in vain that I told him I
had paid him generously for the service he had rendered me. He insisted
that I must come to his terms or he would reveal everything to my
husband. Of course I yielded to that threat, and paid him the sum he
demanded, but I might have saved the money, for Walter Dinsmore, who had