“I so glad you be my sister, and have come back to us from heaven. Why didn’t you bring mamma and the baby with you?” It was in vain they tried to explain; Edith was rather too young to comprehend exactly what they meant, and when there was a lull in the conversation, she whispered to Mildred: “I knew most you was an angel, and some time mayn’t I see your wings and how you fly?” The interview between Mildred and Edith helped to restore Richard’s scattered senses, and when the wing business was settled, he said to Mildred: “Has my daughter no curiosity to know why I left her as I did, and why I have never been to inquire for her?” “Yes, father,” answered Mildred, “I want so much to hear,—but I thought it might disturb you. Will you tell us now?” and nestling closer to his side, with Edith on her lap, she listened breathlessly, while he repeated to her what she did not already know. “I have told you,” he said, “of my father’s bitterness toward Hetty Kirby, and how, with the help of a companion, whom I could trust, I took her to New York, and was married, but I did not tell you how, after the lapse of time, there was born to the beardless college boy a smiling little infant. As soon as possible I hastened to Hetty’s bedside, but the shadow of death was there before me, and one glance at her sweet young face assured me that she would die. ’Twas then that I regretted having kept our marriage a secret from my father, for I felt that I should need his sympathy in the dark hour coming. Something, too, must be done with you, so soon to be made motherless. Hetty was the first to suggest disposing of you as I did. She knew my education was not yet completed, and laying her soft hand on my head, she said: ‘My boy-husband wants to go through college, and if it becomes known that he has been married, those stern men may expel him. Your father, too, will turn you off, as soon as he learns that I have been your wife. I know how strong his prejudices are when once they have been roused, and if he knew our baby had in it a drop of Hetty’s blood, he would spurn it from him, and so he must not know it. My grandmother will not last long, and when we are both dead, send baby to him secretly. Don’t let him know who she is, or whence she came, until he has learned to love her. Then tell him she is yours.’ “This is what Hetty said; and in an unguarded moment I promised to do her bidding, for I was young and dreaded my father’s wrath. Not long after this Hetty died, with her baby folded to her bosom, and her lips murmuring a prayer that God would move the heart of the stern old Judge to care for her little waif.