“Madaline, now that you are a great lady, and have such influential friends, do you not think you could do something for your father?”

“Something for my father?” repeated the girl, with a shudder.  “What can I do for him?”

A new idea suddenly occurred to Mrs. Dornham.  She looked into Lady Arleigh’s pale, beautiful face.

“Madaline,” she said, earnestly, “tell me the whole truth—­is your father’s misfortune any drawback to you?  Tell me the truth; I have a reason for asking you.”

But Lady Arleigh would not pain her mother—­her quiet, simple heart had ached bitterly enough.  She would not add one pang.

“Tell me, dear,” continued Margaret, earnestly; “you do not know how important it is for me to understand.”

“My dear mother,” said Lady Arleigh, gently clasping her arms round her mother’s neck; “do not let that idea make you uneasy.  All minor lights cease to shine, you know, in the presence of greater ones.  The world bows down to Lord Arleigh; very few, I think, know what his wife’s name was.  Be quite happy about me, mother.  I am sure that no one who has seen me since my marriage knows anything about my father.”

“I shall be quite happy, now that I know that,” she observed.

More than once during that visit Margaret debated within herself whether she would tell Lady Arleigh her story or not; but the same weak fear that had caused her to run away with the child, lest she should lose her now, made her refrain from speaking, lest Madaline, on knowing the truth, should be angry with her and forsake her.

If Mrs. Dornham had known the harm that her silence was doing she would quickly have broken it.

Lady Arleigh returned home, taking her silent sorrow with her.  If possible, she was kinder then ever afterward to her mother, sending her constantly baskets of fruit and game—­presents of every kind.  If it had not been for the memory of her convict husband, Mrs. Dornham would for the first time in her life have been quite happy.

Then it was that Lady Arleigh began slowly to droop, then it was that her desolate life became utterly intolerable—­that her sorrow became greater than she could bear.  She must have some one near her, she felt—­some one with whom she could speak—­or she should go mad.  She longed for her mother.  It was true Margaret Dornham was not an educated woman, but in her way she was refined.  She was gentle, tender-hearted, thoughtful, patient, above all, Madaline believed she was her mother—­and she had never longed for her mother’s love and care as she did now, when health, strength, and life seemed to be failing her.

By good fortune she happened to see in the daily papers that Lord Arleigh was staying at Meurice’s Hotel, in Paris.  She wrote to him there, and told him that she had a great longing to have her mother with her.  She told him that she had desired this for a long time, but that she had refrained[6] from expressing the wish lest it should be displeasing to him.