“I did not answer. Every thing turned dark around me, and I went out of the store like a blind woman. What was I to do? How could I act? My husband! my husband! Oh, Anna! my heart is sore now, when I think of the anguish which seized upon it then. He was away, or I should have sought him out and demanded why he had dealt with me so treacherously. What had I done that his love and his honor should be taken from me? I knew that both he and that proud lady were in my power. But what was vengeance to a woman who was seeking for love? ‘No,’ I said, in the depths of my desolation; ‘though he gave her up and came back to me to-morrow, through force or fear, it would not be the same man, or the old love. He may have wronged this lady as he has wronged me. She looked too bright and loyal for a guilty woman. Then why should I wound her as I have been wounded? His child she cannot take from me. God help us both!’” “No wonder you are crying, Anna—I could not cry. But now, now I am getting old, and the very memory of those days makes a child of me. Don’t cry, Anna—don’t cry.” The old lady’s voice died off into sobs, and her tears came down like rain. “Oh, grandmother! how sorry I am. But we love you—love you better than all the world.” “I know it—I know it. You see how much love can spring out of a desert. I could not stay in the same city with that woman. I left Philadelphia. My son was ten years old. He had been delighted with the thoughts of seeing his father; and we had talked our happiness over so often that he seemed a part of my own being. I would have kept the truth from him had that been possible; but it was not—so I told him the truth. His young spirit was terribly aroused, a feeling of sharp resentment possessed him. He could not understand all the legal injustice that had been done us; but he felt for me as no man could have felt. ‘Leave him, mother,’ he said. ‘I am only a little boy, but I will take his place, love you, work for you, worship you. Indeed, indeed I will.’” Anna was sobbing as if her heart would break. She remembered her father’s parting with his mother when he went to the wars to die. The old lady held her close. “Hush, darling! He is in heaven!” “Oh! if we were only with him, all of us—all of us!” Anna cried out. “In God’s own time, dear. He knows best.” After a few moments of quiet weeping Mrs. Burns went on. “We went back to New York. I had a little money, and opened a small store with the name of Burns on the sign. We would not use his name—he had taken it from us.” “Did not the name of Burns belong to you, grandmother?” “It was my own mother’s maiden name.” “Then my——This, I mean your husband, has another name?” “Yes; he has another name.” “Do not tell it me, grandmother. I do not want to hate him, or know him. My father did not wish it, or he would have told us.”