As Maud spoke, she drew the original from her bosom, and placed it in Robert Willoughby’s hands.  When this simple act was performed, her mind seemed relieved; and she waited, with strong natural interest, to hear Robert Willoughby’s comments.

“This, then, Maud, was your own—­your real mother!” the young man said, after studying the miniature, with a thoughtful countenance, for near a minute.  “It is like her—­like you.”

“Like her, Bob?—­How can you know anything or that?—­I suppose it to be my mother, because I think it like myself, and because it is not easy to say who else it can be.  But you cannot know anything of this?”

“You are mistaken, Maud—­I remember both your parents well—­it could not be otherwise, as they were the bosom friends of my own.  You will remember that I am now eight-and-twenty, and that I had seen seven of these years when you were born.  Was my first effort in arms never spoken of in your presence?”

“Never—­perhaps it was not a subject for me to hear, if it were in any manner connected with my parents.”

“You are right—­that must be the reason it has been kept from your ears.”

“Surely, surely, I am old enough to hear it now—­you will conceal nothing from me, Bob?”

“If I would, I could not, now.  It is too late, Maud.  You know the manner in which Major Meredith died?—­”

“He fell in battle, I have suspected,” answered the daughter, in a suppressed, doubtful tone—­“for no one has ever directly told me even that.”

“He did, and I was at his side.  The French and savages made an assault on us, about an hour earlier than this, and our two fathers rushed to the pickets to repel it—­I was a reckless boy, anxious even at that tender age to see a fray, and was at their side.  Your father was one of the first that fell; but Joyce and our father beat the Indians back from his body, and saved it from mutilation.  Your mother was buried in the same grave, and then you came to us, where our have been ever since.”

Maud’s tears flowed fast, and yet it was not so much in grief as in a gush of tenderness she could hardly explain to herself.  Robert Willoughby understood her emotions, and perceived that he might proceed.

“I was old enough to remember both your parents well—­I was a favourite, I believe, with, certainly was much petted by, both—­I remember your birth, Maud, and was suffered to carry you in my arms, ere you were a week old.”

“Then you have known me for an impostor from the beginning, Bob—­must have often thought of me as such!”

“I have known you for the daughter of Lewellen Meredith, certainly; and not for a world would I have you the real child of Hugh Willoughby—­”

“Bob!” exclaimed Maud, her heart beating violently, a rush of feeling nearly overcoming her, in which alarm, consciousness, her own secret, dread of something wrong, and a confused glimpse of the truth, were all so blended, as nearly to deprive her, for the moment, of the use of her senses.