Gertie was looking steadily at him, and her eyes never left his face while he told her the story, beginning with the time when he first asked Edith to be his wife, and she hinted at a page of her life of which she wished to tell him, and which after so many years, had come to him by accident. “I have the letter with me,” he said; “I brought it on purpose to read to you, as it will tell the story so much better than I can.” Taking out Edith’s letter he read it aloud, while Gertie’s eyes deepened their gaze upon his face, and the red all died from her cheeks, which were of an ashen hue, as when the letter was finished, he went on to tell how the child was not dead, as Edith had supposed, and of their search in London, which they gave at last into the hands of the police. “Then, while we were waiting,” he said, “I thought to make some inquiries about you at the office where your annuity is paid. There I heard of a Mrs. Westbrooke, recently from Florence, and to her we went, hoping she might know something of you, and she did. She was the second wife of the man who was not your father, but whose first wife adopted you when her own baby died. Her maid, Mary Stover, afterward Mrs. Rogers, told her of you, and brought you to her from her mother, who had taken you from the —— Street Foundling Hospital, where you had been left on the steps, and where Mary Stover’s sister Anne was at that time nurse. “Gertie, are you going to faint? Do you hear me? Do you understand?” the colonel asked, alarmed at the expression of the face still confronting him so steadily, and never moving a muscle any more than if the features had been chiselled in stone. “Yes, I think—I understand,” came huskily from the livid lips, “that baby, born in Dorset Street, and left on the hospital steps, and hunted for by you—and—and—her—was—was—_I_, and she—your—Mrs. Schuyler—is—my mother—and that—that grave I’ve tended always—is—is my father’s!” She understood it perfectly, but the colonel thought to make it clearer by saying: “Yes, Gertie, you are the child of my wife, Mrs. Schuyler, born in lawful wedlock, and Abelard Lyle was your father!” He opened the window and carried Gertie to it, and let the cool air blow on her, and dashed water on her face, and only that he had seen Edith thus more than once, would have thought her dead, when he laid her back upon the couch and went to summon help. Miss Rossiter watched with Gertie that night and many other nights, while the fever contracted at Godfrey’s bedside, and brought to a crisis by the terrible shock which she had sustained, ran its course. There were a few moments of consciousness that first night, when Gertie’s eyes opened and looked up at Miss Rossiter, who was bending over her. “Am I very sick?” she asked faintly, and Miss Rossiter replied: “Pretty sick, yes; but we hope to have you well soon if you are quiet.” “Am I going to have the fever like Godfrey?” “Yes, we think you are, though not so hard.”