“I never could tell whether Colonel Schuyler knew that such a child ever had existence. If he did not, and your passing for Miss Lyle instead of Mrs. made me suspect that he did not, I thought it would be a cruel thing for me to tell it to him, and that of itself might have kept me from it, even if I had loved Gertie less. If it was not for this frequent pain which warns me of sudden death, I should perhaps keep the secret forever; but I must not leave my little girl alone if anything happens to me, and so I write it down, begging you to take her and do justice to her, for I swear to Heaven she is the child born in Dorset Street, Jan. ——, 18—, of the young woman Heloise or Edith Lyle, whose mother called herself Mrs. Fordham, and left the baby on the steps of the —— Street Hospital. “Perhaps you need not confess the truth to your husband, if he does not already know it, but you can at least _adopt_ Gertie, and treat her as your own, and this I beg of you to do. “And now I have told you all I know. Who Gertie’s father was, or where he died, is a secret to me; only this is sure, the girl known as Gertie Westbrooke is your own daughter, and may God deal with you and prosper you according as you deal with her when I am gone. “Written this day at Hampstead, and sworn to solemnly by me before the Eye which sees me, and which knows what I say is true. MARY ROGERS.” Had Edith needed proof of Gertie’s identity, she had it in this letter, but she did not, and clasping the beautiful girl in her arms, she burst into a paroxysm of tears, moaning softly, “My darling, my baby; it seems like a dream, and God has been so good to keep you all the time and bring you at last to me. Oh, if mother could have known! She loved you from the time you went to lodge with her in London.” “Mamma,” Gertie said suddenly, “she did know! I am sure of it, or she must have guessed. It was the night she died, when I was sitting with her, and accidentally mentioned my birthmark,—that drop of blood. I remember how excited she grew, and how hard she tried to tell me something, but could not. It must have been her suspicion of the truth.” “Perhaps so. I would like to believe she knew it,” Edith answered, and then she told her daughter of the Lyles across the sea in Alnwick; the sweet-faced old lady, and the barearmed Jenny, who had so shocked and disgusted her. Gertie was interested in the grandmother at once, and proposed writing to her immediately, and telling her that the son whom she had mourned so long had left a child who would some day find her in her humble home, and call her grandmamma.