“It seems your mother was an orphan, and had no near relatives to whom you could be sent, and as Marie was then too poor and dependent to support you she placed you in the Asylum as Edith Hastings, visiting you occasionally until she went back to France, her native country.  Her intention was to return in a few months, but a violent attack of inflammatory rheumatism came upon her, depriving her of the use of her limbs, and confining her to her bed for years, and so prevented her from coming back.  Mrs. Jamieson, however, kept her informed with regard to you, and told me that Marie was greatly when she heard you were with me, whom she supposed to be the same Richard Harrington who had saved your life, and of whom her mistress had often talked.  Marie is better now, and when I saw her sister more than a year ago, she was hoping she might soon revisit America.  I left directions for her to visit Collingwood, and for several months I looked for her a little, resolving if she came, to question her minutely concerning your father.  He must have left a fortune, Edith, which by right is yours, if we can prove that you are his child, and with Marie’s aid I hope to do this sometime.  I have, however, almost given her up; but now that you know all I will go again to New York, and seek another interview with Mrs. Jamieson.  Would it please you to have the little orphan, Edith Hastings, turn out to be an heiress?”

“Not for my own sake,” returned Edith; “but if it would make you love me more, I should like it;” and she clung closer to him as he replied,

“Darling that could not be.  I loved you with all the powers I had, even before I knew you were Petrea’s child.  Beautiful Petrea!  I think you must be like her, Edith, except that you are taller.  She was your father’s second wife.  This I knew in Germany, and also that there was a child of Mr. Temple’s first marriage, a little girl, he said.”

“A child—­a little girl,” and Edith started quickly, but the lightning flash which had once gleamed across her bewildered mind, when in the Den she stood gazing at the picture of Miggie Bernard, did not come back to her now, neither did she remember Arthur’s story, so much like Richard’s.  She only thought that possibly there was somewhere in the world a dear, half-sister, whom she should love so much, could she only find her.  Edith was a famous castle-builder, and forgetting that this half-sister, were she living, would be much older than herself, she thought of her only as a school-girl, whose home should be at Collingwood, and on whom Mrs. Richard Harrington would lavish so much affection, wasting on her the surplus love which, perhaps, could not be given to the father—­husband.  How then was her castle destroyed, when Richard said,

“She, too, is dead, so Mrs. Jamieson told me, and there is none of the family left save you.”

“I wish I knew where mother was buried,” Edith sighed, her tears falling to the memory of her girl mother, whose features it seamed to her she could recall, as well as a death-bed scene, when somebody with white lips and mournful black eyes clasped her in her arms and prayed that God would bless her, and enable her always to do right.