came up before her just as it lay in its humble coffin, over the deception of eighteen years, her heart bounded with one wild, yearning throb, for every bleeding fiber clung with a deathlike grasp to her who had been so suddenly taken from her.  “I love her still!” she cried; “but can I take her back?” And then commenced the fiercest struggle of all, the battling of love and pride, the one rebelling against the child of Hagar Warren, and the other clamoring loudly that without that child the world to her was nothing.  It was the hour of Madam Conway’s humiliation, and in bitterness of spirit she groaned:  “That I should come to this!  Theo first, and Margaret, my bright, my beautiful Margaret, next!  Oh, how can I give her up when I loved her best of all—­best of all!”

This was true, for all the deeper, stronger love of Madam Conway’s nature had gone forth to the merry, gleeful girl whose graceful, independent bearing she had so often likened to herself and the haughty race with which she claimed relationship.  How was this illusion dispelled!  Margaret was not a Conway, nor yet a Davenport.  A servant-girl had been her mother, and of her father there was nothing known.  Madam Conway was one who seldom wept for grief.  She had stood calmly at the bedside of her dying husband, had buried her only daughter from her sight, had met with many reverses, and shed for all no tears, but now they fell like rain upon her face, burning, blistering as they fell, but bringing no relief.

“I shall miss her in the morning,” she cried, “miss her at noon, miss her in the lonesome nights, miss her everywhere—­oh, Margaret, Margaret, ’tis more than I can bear!  Come back to me now, just as you are.  I want you here—­here where the pain is hardest,” and she clasped her arms tightly over her heaving bosom.  Then her pride returned again, and with it came thoughts of Arthur Carrollton.  He would scoff at her as weak and sentimental; he would never take beyond the sea a bride of “Hagarish” birth; and duty demanded that she too should be firm, and sanction his decision.  “But when he’s gone,” she whispered, “when he has left America behind, I’ll find her, if my life is spared.  I’ll find poor Margaret, and see that she does not want, though I must not take her back.”

This resolution, however, did not bring her comfort, and the hands pressed so convulsively upon her side could not ease her pain.  Surely never before had so dark an hour infolded that haughty woman, and a prayer that she might die was trembling on her lips when a footfall echoed along the hall, and Arthur Carrollton stood before her.  His face was very pale, bearing marks of the storm he had passed through; but he was calm, and his voice was natural as he said:  “Possibly what we have heard is false.  It may be a vagary of Hagar’s half-crazed brain.”