Crimson with shame, Dainty dropped forlornly before her with down-dropped eyes, speechless with fear, and the woman continued, sharply: "Take off that cape you've been shrouded in all the winter, pretending to suffer from the cold, and let me see if it is really hiding your disgrace." "Oh, spare me!" "Do as I bid you! There! I've dragged it off in spite of you! Oh, for shame--shame! How could you be so wicked with that innocent face?" "Oh, I am not as bad as you think! I--I--" "Hush! You can't excuse your disgrace. Mr. Sparks told me all along you were a bad girl, and told me when we became engaged I must send you to the right-about before we were married. But, somehow, I couldn't believe ill of you, till I see it now with my own eyes." "Oh! may I stay till to-morrow? You will not drive me out into the streets to-night?" imploringly. "I ought to do it to pay you for cheating me so; but I'm a Christian woman, and, somehow, I pity you, and I can't be hard on you. You may stay to-night; but you must leave in the morning directly after breakfast. There's a hospital in this city for poor girls that's gone astray like you. You can go there, and the good doctor will take you in and let you stay till your child is born. Then you can put it in the foundlings' home and some good people may adopt it." "Merciful God, have pity!" shrilled over the girl's tortured lips, as she sank on her knees, overcome by the horror of her thoughts. Her child--Love Ellsworth's lawful heir--to be born in a home for "girls gone astray," and placed in a foundlings' home, to be "adopted by some good people." Had she come to this? She, whose future had promised so radiantly nine brief months ago! A wild prayer to Heaven broke from her pallid lips: "Oh, God! take us both--the forsaken mother and child--to heaven!" "It's too late to take on now. Better behaved yourself right at first," the old maid admonished her; adding, soothingly: "Go to bed now, and I'll send to-morrow for the good doctor to come and take you to the lying-in hospital." But in the gray dawn of the cold morning she found the bed empty, and poor Dainty gone. CHAPTER XXXV. GRAND COMPANY. A strange chance, or, perhaps, a kindly Providence, brought Sarah Ann Peters and old black mammy together that spring at the railway station near Ellsworth, where both were then living. The indefatigable white woman was laid low with la grippe, and her husband, in seeking a maid-of-all-work to fill her place, could find no one to take the situation but the aged Virginia. As six of the large brood of sons were away at school, mammy undertook "to do for the rest," as she expressed it; and the last of March found her domesticated at the six-roomed frame house on the edge of the woods, a mile from the station.