Mary obeyed, and taking out a much soiled, blotted letter, Mrs. Campbell asked her to read it aloud.  It was as follows—­“Daughter Jane,—­I now take this opportunity of informing you, that I’ve lost your sister Ella, and have now no child saving yourself, who, if you behave well, will be my only heir.  Sometimes I wish you were here, for it’s lonesome living alone, but, I suppose you’re better off where you are.  Do you know any thing of that girl Sarah?  Her cross-grained uncle has never written me a word since he left England.  If I live three years longer I shall come to America, and until that time, adieu.  Your father,—­Henry Temple Esq.  M.P.”

“How short and cold!” was Mary’s first exclamation, for her impressions of her grandfather were not very agreeable.

“It is like all his letters,” answered Mrs. Campbell “But it was cruel to make me think Ella was dead, for how else could I suppose he had lost her? and when I asked the particulars of her death, he sent me no answer; but at this I did not so much wonder, for he never wrote oftener than once in two or three years, and the next that I heard, he was dead, and I was heiress of all his wealth.”

Then, as the conviction came over her that Mary was indeed the child of her own sister, she wound her arms about her neck, and kissing her lips, murmured, “My child,—­my Mary.  Oh, had I known this sooner, you should not have been so cruelly deserted, and little Allie should never have died in the alms-house.  But you’ll never leave me now, for all that I have is yours—­yours and Ella’s.”

The thought of Ella touched a new chord, and Mrs Campbell’s tears were rendered less bitter, by the knowledge that she had cared for, and been a mother, to one of her sister’s orphan children.

“I know now,” said she, “why, from the first, I felt so drawn towards Ella, and why her clear, large eyes, are so much like my own lost darling’s, and even you, Mary—­”

Here Mrs. Campbell paused, for proud as she now was of Mary, there had been a time when the haughty lady turned away from the sober, homely little child, who begged so piteously “to go with Ella” where there was room and to spare.  All this came up in sad review, before Mrs. Campbell, and as she recalled the incidents of her sister’s death, and thought of the noble little Frank, who often went hungry and cold that his mother and sisters might be warmed and fed, she felt that her heart would burst with its weight of sorrow.

“Oh, my God!” said she, “to die so near me,—­my only sister, and I never know it,—­never go near her. I with all my wealth, as much hers as mine,—­and she dying of starvation.”

Wiping the hot tears from her own eyes, Mary strove to comfort her aunt by telling her how affectionately her mother had always remembered her.  “And even on the night of her death,” said she, “she spoke of you, and bade me, if I ever found you, love you for her sake.”