“Oh, Gertie, Gertie, thank Heaven,” Edith gasped, and the next moment she lay at her husband’s feet with a face as white and rigid and still as are the faces of the dead! There was great excitement then in Mrs. Westbrooke’s rooms, ringing of bells, gathering of servants, and hurrying for physicians, three of whom came together and concurred in pronouncing it nothing worse than a fainting fit, from which the lady would soon recover. “Shall I order a room for her here?” Mrs. Westbrooke asked, anxious to relieve herself as soon as possible from her rather troublesome guests. The colonel, who knew Edith would be happier in their own apartments at the hotel, declined Mrs. Westbrooke’s offer, and as soon as consciousness returned took his wife in his arms, and, carrying her to the carriage waiting for them, was driven back to his hotel, where he laid her upon the couch, and then sat down beside her, waiting for her to speak. For a moment, however, she could not, and she lay perfectly still with the light of a great and unutterable happiness shining in her eyes and illuminating every feature. “Edith, darling, you are very glad?” the colonel asked at last. “Yes, Howard, so glad, oh, so glad;” Edith replied. “God has been so good to me, so good that I never can thank Him enough. That Gertie should be my daughter and living with me all the time; oh, God, I do thank Thee, I do. Howard, you are glad too, glad for Gertie?” She questioned him eagerly, and he answered her without the slightest hesitancy: “Yes, Edith, very glad.” And he was glad, and when, as he was leaving Mrs. Westbrooke, that lady said to him, “Pardon me, if I seem curious, but what is the girl Gertie to this lady?” he promptly answered: “Gertie is _our_ daughter,” and with that little pronoun _our_ he adopted Gertie into his heart and love, and felt that she was his as well as Edith’s. “Our daughter!” That was what he called her to his wife, who clasped her arms around his neck in token that she appreciated this last great kindness of his.