"Is she living or dead?" asked the earl, with terrible calmness.
"She is living," replied the weeping woman.
Lord Mountdean raised his face reverently to the summer sky.
"Thank Heaven!" he said, devoutly; and then added, turning to the
woman--"Living and well?"
"No, not well; but she will be in time. Oh, sir, forgive me! I did
wrong, perhaps, but I thought I was acting for the best."
"It was a strange 'best,'" he said, "to place a child beyond its
parent's reach."
"Oh, sir," cried Margaret Dornham, "I never thought of that! She came to
me in my dead child's place--it was to me as though my own child had
come back again. You could not tell how I loved her. Her little head lay
on my breast, her little fingers caressed me, her little voice murmured
sweet words to me. She was my own child--I loved her so, sir!" and the
poor woman's voice was broken with sobs. "All the world was hard and
cruel and cold to me--the child never was; all the world disappointed
me--the child never did. My heart soul clung to her. And then, sir,
when she was able to run about, a pretty, graceful, loving child, the
very joy of my heart and sunshine of my life, the doctor died, and I was
left alone with her.
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