“Oh, Maggie, my lost one, can it be!” he whispered to himself, and pressing his hand upon his chest, which heaved with strong emotion, he staggered to a seat, while the perspiration stood in beaded drops upon his forehead and around his lips.

“What is it, Mr. Carrollton?  ’Tis something dreadful, sure,” said Mrs. Jeffrey, appearing in the door, but Madam Conway motioned her away, and, tottering to his side, said, “Read it to me—­read.”

The Sound of her voice recalled his wandering mind, and covering his face with his hands he moaned in anguish; then, growing suddenly calm, he snatched up the letter, which had fallen to the floor, and read it aloud; while Madam Conway, stupefied with horror, sank at his feet, and clasping her hands above her head, rocked to and fro, but made no word of comment.  Far down the long ago her thoughts were straying, and gathering up many bygone scenes which told her that what she heard was true.

“Yes, ’tis true,” she groaned; and then, powerless to speak another word, she laid her head upon a chair, while Mr. Carrollton, preferring to be alone, sought the solitude of his own room, where unobserved he could wrestle with his sorrow and conquer his inborn pride, which whispered to him that a Carrollton must not wed a bride so far beneath him.

Only a moment, though, and then the love he bore for Maggie Miller rolled back upon him with an overwhelming power, while his better judgment, with that love, came hand in hand, pleading for the fair young girl, who, now that he had lost her, seemed a thousandfold dearer than before.  But he had not lost her; he would find her.  She was Maggie Miller still to him, and though old Hagar’s blood were in her veins he would not give her up.  This resolution once made, it could not be shaken, and when half an hour or more was passed he walked with firm, unfaltering footsteps back to the apartment where Madam Conway still sat upon the floor, her head resting upon the chair, and her frame convulsed with grief.

Her struggle had been a terrible one, and it was not over yet, for with her it was more than a matter of pride and love.  Her daughter’s rights had been set at naught; a wrong had been done to the dead; the child who slept beneath the pine had been neglected; nay, in life, had been, perhaps, despised for an intruder, for one who had no right to call her grandmother; and shudderingly she cried, “Why was it suffered thus to be?” Then as she thought of white-haired Hagar Warren, she raised her hand to curse her, but the words died on her lips, for Hagar’s deed had brought to her much joy; and now, as she remembered the bounding step, the merry laugh, the sunny face, and loving words which had made her later years so happy, she involuntarily stretched out her arms in empty air, moaning sadly:  “I want her here.  I want her now, just as she used to be.”  Then, over the grave of her buried daughter, over the grave of the sickly child, whose thin, blue face