its identity. It would be so easy to tell its father that it had perished in the fire; there could be no positive evidence about any of the victims of the disaster. If it were out of the way, then my baby would inherit the fortune which I had always considered was my due. I was not left well off, and money meant so much to me. I had not been brought up to study economy, and I hated to be poor. I am a good judge of character, and I knew from your face that you would not abandon the child you had saved. I thought Fate had interfered forcibly, and had given it into your keeping instead of mine. At the moment it seemed to me a direct interposition of Providence, and a sign that my father's inheritance was not intended to be lost to me after all. Before me stood a great choice--the good of my sister's little one, or my own--and I chose my own. The sequel proved easy--only too easy. I said the baby I had seen at the inn was not my niece, and nobody doubted my word. My brother-in-law and the ayah were already on their way to India, Mrs. Burke was dead, and no one else was likely to raise the question of identity. The portrait circulated in the newspapers was such a poor snapshot that neither my nurse nor any of Mr. Clarke's relations recognized it. They had not known the child intimately; they had only seen her once or twice in her ayah's arms. Before I left the Red Lion at Greenfield I ascertained your name--I scarcely knew why; it seemed an instinct at the moment. I wished to forget it, but it remained all the same--one of those things which it is impossible to wine from one's remembrance.