"But I shall never do that, for I am as proud as Lord Ivon's heiress, and, though I love her to madness, I will never even see her again unless she recalls me to her side," he mused; and then he realized, with a start, that now he could not marry Jewel Fielding since he felt so sure that Azalia Brooke was no other than his lost wife, lovely, fickle, willful Flower. "Poor Jewel! she will take it hard, losing me like this," he thought, remembering her mad love with manly pity. He asked himself if he should tell Jewel what he had discovered, and decided that he would not do so. "Let Azalia Brooke keep her secret. I love her too well to betray her even to the sister who mourns her as dead. She may even marry Lord Clive, and believe herself safe under the mask of Lord Ivon's heiress. If I was wrong in binding her to me ere she fully knew her own heart, I will atone by 'silence to the death,'" he sighed, with loyal self-sacrifice. He rewarded the old sexton most generously for his information; then, after some grave and thoughtful minutes spent by the grave of Daisy Forrest, he determined to return at once to Boston. But while walking back to the little hotel, a startling thought came to him. That dream of the mulatto man, Sam--what if it were no dream, but a reality? Flower had not drowned herself that night, although Jewel had been so positive of the fact. She had borne a child, his unhappy young girl-wife. What had become of the little one? If it had died--his dear little child that he had never seen--he should like to stand beside its grave. If it had lived, and the young mother, in her desperation, had cast it off, he should like to have it--should like to carry it home to his mother, and, telling her some of the circumstances of his secret marriage, ask her to cherish it for the sake of its lovely young mother, who was dead. Yes, he would tell her that the child's mother was dead. That would be best; no one should learn the secret of Lord Ivon's great-granddaughter. "The child will be all mine, but that fair, proud beauty is not for me," he sighed, then pulled himself together with a start. "I am dreaming! Of course the child is dead. But I will go to Virginia all the same." CHAPTER LIII. Few of us find our cherished dreams come true, but Laurie Meredith had that pleasure, for on Poky's cabin floor he found his own child playing--a dimpled tot of three years, with Flower's arch and lovely face lighted by his own brown eyes. Poky did not attempt to deny the truth. She was only too happy to see Laurie Meredith and confide to him the whole story of her possession of the child.