Thornton nor his wife know aught of the letter, nor will they unless you
respond, for the child will keep her own counsel, I am well assured.

"Again forgive me if I have done wrong, and believe me, as ever,

"Yours, sincerely,
"ELLA BARKER."


Daisy's face was as pale as ashes as she read Miss Barker's letter, and
then snatching up the other, devoured its contents almost at a glance,
while her breath came in panting gasps and her heart seemed trying to
burst through her throat. She could neither move nor cry out for a
moment, but she sat like one turned into stone with that sense of
suffocation oppressing her, and that horrible pain in her heart. She had
thought the grave was closed, the old wound healed by time and silence;
and now a little child had torn it open, and it was bleeding and
throbbing again with a pang such as she had never felt before, while
there crept over her such a feeling of desolation and loneliness, a
want of something unpossessed, as few have ever experienced.

But for her own foolishness that sweet little child might have been
hers, she thought, as her heart went after the little one with an
indescribable yearning which made her stretch out her arms as if to take
the baby to her bosom and hold it there forever. Guy had called it for
her, and that touched her more than anything else. He had not forgotten
her then. She had never supposed he had, but to be thus assured of it
was very sweet, and as she thought of it and read again little Daisy's
letter, the tightness about her heart and the choking sensation in her
throat began to give way, and one after another the great tears rolled