“Oh, Mrs. Flint, it was for the greed of gold, that has always cursed my life--the longing for gold and pleasure! A beautiful woman came to me, and said: ‘I have been married two years, and I have no child. My husband will never love me till I give him an heir. I would like a little girl because his first wife had a boy, and I hate it. Find me a pretty baby, and help me to impose it on him as my own when he returns from his long journey, and you shall live with me, and I will make you rich.’ Wretch that I was, I stole Mrs. Ray’s sweet baby, and helped the other woman to fool her husband. She paid me well; but growing weary of my extortions after two years, she and her husband stole away North, where I could never trace them, till one night I saw him on the train and followed him, only to find that his wife had died years before.” “But my child, my darling, where is she?” sobbed the eager mother. “Where is the child?” echoed Mrs. Flint, suspiciously, and Rachel Dane answered, gladly: “Oh, how glad I am to restore her safe to her mother’s arms! She is here with you, Mrs. Flint--the girl called Cinthia Dawn, but no kin of yours, for she is the baby I stole for Mrs. Dawn, the unloved wife--the child of Mrs. Richard Ray, and may Heaven forgive my sin!” CHAPTER XLII. IN THE SUNSHINE. “He laughed a laugh of merry scorn; He turned and kissed her where she stood; ‘If you are not the heiress born, And I,’ said he, ‘the next in blood-- “‘If you are not the heiress born, And I,’ said he, ‘the lawful heir, We two will wed to-morrow morn, And you shall still be Lady Clare!’” When Arthur Varian Dawn left his father’s room so hastily that day, it was with the firm determination to see his parents married again before the set of sun, if it could possibly be accomplished without injury to his father’s poor hold on life. He had a brief talk with Doctor Deane, who agreed with him that the consummation of so joyful an event ought to do good to the patient, giving him new hold on life, if such a thing were possible in his precarious state. “I do not wish to deceive you,” he said, with professional frankness. “The case is serious. I am not frightened at the scalp-wound, because it is doing nicely, and the compound fracture of the leg, below the knee, might get well in six weeks if the patient will lie in bed all that time; but there are symptoms of internal injuries that make me uneasy. If I am mistaken about that, he may pull through.” “God grant it!” cried Arthur, fervently. “And as you say,” continued the doctor, “whether he lives or dies, it will be a comfort to him to marry his divorced wife over again, so I will go with you to get the license and the preacher.” So, together with Frederick Foster, they went to arrange the necessary details, and in their absence there occurred that scene by the death-bed of Rachel Dane that was to make such a change in the destinies of Arthur and Cinthia, the sorely tried lovers.