"Do you see that path, Kate? Well, it leads to my grandfather's house. I wonder if he still lives in it with Mrs. Marks and my cousin Edith! I will show you to-morrow the place where I felt tired, and Cornelius carried me to Ryde. Why, Kate, we need not go on; this is Rock Cottage; I forgot you did not know it." "Yes, there it stood, the same isolated white-washed, low-roofed dwelling in its lone garden. My tears rushed forth as I saw again the home where I had been reared, and where my father had died. Kate opened the door, but as she crossed the threshold she turned deadly pale, and sank rather than sat in the nearest chair. "Kate!" I cried, quite alarmed, "what is the matter with you?" I passed my arm around her neck; she gave me a most sorrowful look, then laid her head on my shoulder, and cried as if her heart would break. "Oh, Kate!" I said, much distressed, "he has promised to be back in two years, and indeed he will keep his word." She did not seem to heed me. "It was here," she murmured, "yes, it was here he died." This time I looked at her silent and astonished. "Oh, Daisy!" she cried, clasping her hands and looking up too, "is it possible that you neither know nor guess that I was to have been your father's wife, and that you ought to have been my child?" Her passionate tone went through my very heart. "You, Kate!" I said; "you!" "Yes," she replied, weeping more slowly; "it was to have been--it was not--he died here alone, I was far away." Miss O'Reilly made me feel very strangely. I had never known my mother. I drew closer to her, and after a while I said-- "Why did you not marry him?" "He was poor, and I had the child to rear; I could not bear to bring two burdens upon him; it was pride, he thought it was mistrust, and married another; I had no right to complain, nor did I; but it was then I took to being so fond of the boy, just I suppose because he had cost me so dear." "But why did you not marry Papa after Mamma died?" I inquired. "He never asked me, child," and she bowed her head with sad and humble resignation; "I thought he would, and I should have been glad to have had him, but perhaps he could not quite forgive my having once preferred my little brother to my grown-up lover; perhaps he thought me altered, and no longer the pretty girl he had courted: whatever it was, he did not ask me; and yet how good and friendly it was of him to help me as he did to rear the boy for whom I had given him up! I sometimes think he liked me in his heart, for Cornelius has often told me how my name was the last he uttered; and I cannot help fancying he meant I was to have the care of you. Oh! Midge, Midge," she added, looking me in the face very wistfully, "I have loved you very dearly, because you were his child, but I have often remembered that you ought also to have been mine." "If you had been Papa's wife, I mean his first wife," I said very