She leaned forward, her ringed hands clasped, her blue eyes lighted and eager, her pretty face aglow.  But Miriam drew back with a frown.

“I have nothing to tell you, Mollie—­nothing that would make you better or happier to hear.  Be content and ask no questions.”

“I can’t be content, and I must ask questions!” the girl cried, passionately.  “If you cared for me, as you seem to, you would tell me!  What is Mr. Walraven to me?  Why has he brought me here?”

“Ask him.”

“He won’t tell me.  He says he took a fancy to me, seeing me play ‘Fanchon’ at K——­, and brought me here and adopted me.  A very likely story!  No, Miriam; I am silly enough, Heaven knows, but I am not quite so silly as that.  He came after me because you sent him, and because I have some claim on him he dare not forego.  What is it, Miriam?  Am I his daughter?”

Miriam sat and stared at her a moment in admiring wonder, then her dark, gaunt face relaxed into a grim smile.

“What a sharp little witch it is!  His daughter, indeed!  What do you think about it yourself?  Does the voice of nature speak in your filial heart, or is the resemblance between you so strong?”

Mollie shook her sunny curls.

“The ‘voice of nature’ has nothing to say in the matter, and I am no more like him than a white chick is like a mastiff.  But it might be so, you know, for all that.”

“I know.  Would it make you any happier to know you were his daughter?”

“I don’t know,” said Mollie, thoughtfully.  “I dare say not.  For, if I were his daughter and had a right to his name, I would probably bear it, and be publicly acknowledged as such before now; and if I am his daughter, with no right to his name, I know I would not live ten-minutes under the same roof with him after finding it out.”

“Sharp little Mollie!  Ask no questions, then, and I’ll tell you no lies.  Take the goods the gods provide, and be content.”

“But, Miriam, are you really my aunt?”

“Yes; that much is true.”

“And your name is Dane?”

“It is.”

“And my mother was your sister, and I bear my mother’s name?”

The dark, weather-beaten face of the haggard woman lighted up with a fiery glow, and into either eye leaped a devil.

“Mollie Dane, if you ever want me to speak to you again, never breathe the name of your mother.  Whatever she did, and whatever she was, the grave has closed over her, and there let her lie.  I never want to hear her name this side of eternity.”

Mollie looked almost frightened; she shrunk away with a wistful little sigh.

“I am never to know, then, if seems, and I am to go on through life a cheat and a lie.  It is very hard.  People have found out already I am not what I seem.”

“How?” sharply.

“Why, the night I was deluded from home, it was by a letter signed ‘Miriam’ purporting to come from you, saying you were dying, and that you wanted to tell me all.  I went, and walked straight into the cunningest trap that ever was set for a poor little girl.”