“You know me,” said the young woman, “as Miss Hohlfelder; but that is not actually my name.  In fact I do not know my real name, for I am not the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Hohlfelder, but only an adopted child.  While Mrs. Hohlfelder lived, I never knew that I was not her child.  I knew I was very different from her and father,—­I mean Mr. Hohlfelder.  I knew they were fair and I was dark; they were stout and I was slender; they were slow and I was quick.  But of course I never dreamed of the true reason of this difference.  When mother—­Mrs. Hohlfelder—­died, I found among her things one day a little packet, carefully wrapped up, containing a child’s slip and some trinkets.  The paper wrapper of the packet bore an inscription that awakened my curiosity.  I asked father Hohlfelder whose the things had been, and then for the first time I learned my real story.

“I was not their own daughter, he stated, but an adopted child.  Twenty-three years ago, when he had lived in St. Louis, a steamboat explosion had occurred up the river, and on a piece of wreckage floating down stream, a girl baby had been found.  There was nothing on the child to give a hint of its home or parentage; and no one came to claim it, though the fact that a child had been found was advertised all along the river.  It was believed that the infant’s parents must have perished in the wreck, and certainly no one of those who were saved could identify the child.  There had been a passenger list on board the steamer, but the list, with the officer who kept it, had been lost in the accident.  The child was turned over to an orphan asylum, from which within a year it was adopted by the two kind-hearted and childless German people who brought it up as their own.  I was that child.”

The woman seated by Clara’s side had listened with strained attention.  “Did you learn the name of the steamboat?” she asked quietly, but quickly, when Clara paused.

“The Pride of St. Louis,” answered Clara.  She did not look at Mrs. Harper, but was gazing dreamily toward the front, and therefore did not see the expression that sprang into the other’s face,—­a look in which hope struggled with fear, and yearning love with both,—­nor the strong effort with which Mrs. Harper controlled herself and moved not one muscle while the other went on.

“I was never sought,” Clara continued, “and the good people who brought me up gave me every care.  Father and mother—­I can never train my tongue to call them anything else—­were very good to me.  When they adopted me they were poor; he was a pharmacist with a small shop.  Later on he moved to Cincinnati, where he made and sold a popular ‘patent’ medicine and amassed a fortune.  Then I went to a fashionable school, was taught French, and deportment, and dancing.  Father Hohlfelder made some bad investments, and lost most of his money.  The patent medicine fell off in popularity.  A year or two ago we came to this city to live.  Father bought this block and opened the little drug store below.  We moved into the rooms upstairs.  The business was poor, and I felt that I ought to do something to earn money and help support the family.  I could dance; we had this hall, and it was not rented all the time, so I opened a dancing-school.”