But it was not until the next morning when she was eating her
breakfast that the climax came. Then the door-bell rang, and
presently Cynthia was summoned into another room. She kissed Ellen,
and bade her go on with her breakfast and she would return shortly;
but before she had quite left the room a man stood unexpectedly in
the door-way, a man who looked younger than Cynthia. He had a fair
mustache, a high forehead scowling over near-sighted blue eyes, and
stood with a careless slouch of shoulders in a gray coat.

"Good-morning," he began. Then he stopped short when he saw Ellen in
her tall chair staring shyly around at him through her soft golden
mist of hair. "What child is that?" he demanded; but Cynthia with a
sharp cry sprang to him, and fairly pulled him out of the room, and
closed the door.

Then Ellen heard voices rising higher and higher, and Cynthia say,
in a voice of shrill passion: "I cannot, Lyman. I cannot give her
up. You don't know what I have suffered since George married and
took little Robert away. I can't let this child go."

Then came the man's voice, hoarse with excitement: "But, Cynthia,
you must; you are mad. Think what this means. Why, if people know
what you have done, kept this child, while all this search has been
going on, and made no effort to find out who she was--"

"I did ask her, and she would not tell me," Cynthia said, miserably.

"Good Lord! what of that? That is nothing but a subterfuge. You must
have seen in the papers--"