"I hardly know how to answer you," said Miss Gladden slowly, "there is some mystery about it all, dear, that I do not understand; he might perhaps talk more freely with you, but with me he appeared willing to say very little regarding your mother, or your friends. Still, he gave me a hint, so vague and shadowy I scarcely understood it, but to the effect that he thought there might, before long, be an opportunity for a meeting between you and those whom he believed to be your friends." "Well," said Lyle, after a pause, "Jack is a true friend to me, he knows what is best, and I can afford to wait with even such a possibility to look forward to. I will not wait in idleness either, I shall try to find some clue, some evidence as to who I really am, and something tells me I will succeed." Then she added tenderly, "Do you know, I believe, whoever my mother may have been, Jack must have loved her." "She certainly was very dear to him," replied Miss Gladden. They talked till far into the morning hours, and as they finally separated for the night, Lyle approached her friend, and throwing her arms about her neck, she exclaimed, almost in tears: "Oh, Leslie, you can never know how glad I am that you have shown me this, and shown it to me to-night! I have felt so disgraced, so degraded by the life here, it seemed as if I were a part of it all, a part of my own hateful surroundings but now, I know I am not; now," she continued, lifting her head proudly and raising her arms slowly with a beautiful gesture, "they can fetter me no longer! The chains that have held me so long and so cruelly are already bursting; even now, I can rise above them; soon, I shall be free!" CHAPTER XXXVI. Do coming events cast their shadows before? Did the silently-waving pinions of the angel who "troubled the waters" give any hint of his beneficent approach? However that may be, certain it is that on the morning of the day in which the hitherto untroubled depths of Lyle's womanly nature were to be stirred by the mightiest of influences, there came to her a prescience, thrilling and vibrating through her whole being, that this day was to be the crisis, the turning point of her life. On that day, she was to meet one whose influence upon her own life she felt would be far greater than that of any human being she could recall. Lyle was not in love. As yet, she knew nothing of what love might be, but she possessed rare depth of feeling. In her lonely, secluded life, she had known few emotions, but those few were deep and lasting; and when, a few months before, she had incidentally seen the photograph of Morton Rutherford,--only one among many, all unknown to her,--it had left an impression upon her heart and brain, never to be effaced.