At this very time, Miss Drayton, too, was bearing about a disturbed heart.  She was fond of Anne and had always regretted her being sent to an orphanage, but the feeling was not strong enough to make her reclaim the child.  Anne’s uncle was a criminal, after all, and she herself had a strange secret.  How could she have acquired those jewels but by theft?  Miss Drayton shrank from the responsibility of such a child.  Perhaps the strict oversight of an asylum was best for her.

This course of thought was abruptly changed by the receipt of a letter forwarded from Washington to the Maryland village where Miss Drayton was visiting.  It was a many-postmarked much-travelled letter, that had journeyed far and long before it reached her.  Mailed in Liverpool, it was sent to Nantes, in care of the American consul.  It had been held, under the supposition that the lady to whom it was addressed might come to the city and ask for mail sent there for safe keeping.  Finally, the unclaimed letter was sent to the American embassy at Paris.  There it tarried awhile.  Then it fell into the hands of a secretary who knew Miss Drayton, and he sent the letter to the Washington post-office, requesting that her street and number be supplied.

This was done, and the ten-months-old letter reached Miss Drayton one July afternoon.  She glanced curiously from the unfamiliar handwriting to the signature.  Carey G. Mayo.  Anne’s uncle!

With changing countenance, she read the letter hastily.

Then she reread it once and again.

“Liverpool, England,

“20 September, 1910.

   “Miss Sarah Drayton,

“Dear Madam,—­I write to you on the eve of leaving the city, to commend my niece to your care.  You have been so good to the child that I venture to hope you will care for her till I can relieve you of the burden.  She has no near relative and I am in no position to hunt up the cousins who might take charge of her.

“I told Anne not to tell you about seeing me till you reached Nantes, for by that time, if ever, I shall be beyond the reach of officers of the law.  Please keep her mother’s rings that I gave to her, unless it becomes necessary to dispose of them to provide for her.  If I live, I will replace her money that I squandered.

“Will you leave your address for me with the consul in Nantes?  For God’s sake, madam, do not betray me to the hands of the law.  I am a guilty man, but I am putting myself in your power for the sake of this innocent child.  Be very good to her, I implore you.  Deal with her as you would be dealt with in your hour of need.

     “Respectfully yours,

          “Carey G. Mayo.”

This was the secret then, this the mystery.  How she had misjudged poor little Anne!  She would hasten to take the child from the asylum and would do all possible to make up for the lonely, neglected past.  She wrote at once to the consul at Nantes, asking him to forward to her Washington address any letters which came for her.  Then she hastened her departure to Washington.