‘My poor father!’ here broke in Gladys.  ’He bitterly repented this, his only deception.  He was of a good family, and his mother was an O’Brien; but no one belonging to him could afford to purchase him a commission, and so he went into the ranks.  He once told me, that he persuaded my mother to marry him first, and then promised to let her write to his father.  But I only know scraps of the story.  I fancy my father was on his way home on leave, when he saw my mother and fell in love with her.  He loved her very dearly, and as long as he lived she wanted nothing that he could get her.  The regiment was suddenly ordered abroad, and my mother could not write to her father, or did not, before they sailed.  And so she delayed, and delayed; but she wrote at last, and received no answer at all.  I fancy she wrote several times from foreign parts, but never heard from any one.  I know she wrote again from Ireland; but the letter was returned, with a note from some one, saying that her father had been dead some years, and no one knew anything of her brother.’

‘Too true! too true!’ said Mr Jones.  ’My poor father, never very strong, was in his grave in less than six months after my sister left him.  I returned from college to nurse, and bury him.  I have told you all this, my dear Serena, little thinking that the young girl I first saw, after visiting his grave some twenty years after I had seen him laid in it, should be the child of the beloved daughter who had helped to hasten him thither.’

‘My poor, dear mother!’ said Gladys, sobbing as if her heart would break.

’Still less that you, my dear niece, would be five or six years in my house; I loving you as a daughter, and yet not knowing the relationship existing between us.  But how could it have been discovered but for this book?  I only knew of you, that you were an Irish girl escaping from poverty in Ireland, to find some Welsh friends, whose address even you did not know.  But for your evident truthfulness, the very story must have been doubted.  When I saw you at Mr Prothero’s, I took you for his daughter; since I have looked upon you as one of our family, an orphan to be pitied and loved.  Let us thank God and kind Christian people, that you have been so pitied and loved.’

Mr Jones’ mild grey eyes, full of tears, turned upon Miss Gwynne, who said, hastily,—­

’Ought not we to tell her first and best friends of this strange discovery?—­Rowland, Mr Prothero, and Netta.  What must they think of our long absence?’

‘Not for worlds, Miss Gwynne, if you please!’ cried Gladys, ’I could never be what I would like to be to Mrs Jenkins and her dear mother, if I were anything but the Gladys they have always known.  They would be treating me as—­as—­they would not let me work and wait upon Mrs Jenkins.  Until she is at home, at least, let me be as I am, as I was; it is all so strange.  Until I have offered to remain and nurse her, and been refused—­until, in short—­’