parlor.

"Maude!" How Dr. Kennedy started at the mention of a name which
drove all thoughts of the five hundred dollars from his mind. There
was feeling--passion--everything, now, in his cold gray eye, but
quickly recovering his composure, he said calmly: "Maude, Matty--
Maude, is that your child's name?"

"Why, yes," she answered laughingly. "Didn't you know it before? "

"How should I," he replied, "when in your letters you have always
called her 'daughter'? But has she no other name? She surely was not
baptized Maude?"

Ere Mrs. Remington could speak, the sound of little pattering feet
was heard in the hall without, and in a moment Maude Remington stood
before her stepfather-elect, looking, as that rather fastidious
gentleman thought, more like a wild gipsy than the child of a
civilized mother. She was a fat, chubby child, not yet five years
old; black-eyed, black-haired, black-faced, with short, thick curls,
which, damp with perspiration, stood up all over her head, giving
her a singular appearance. She had been playing in the brook, her
favorite companion, and now, with little spatters of mud ornamenting
both face and pantalets, her sun-bonnet hanging down her back, and
her hands full of pebble-stones, she stood furtively eyeing the
stranger, whose mental exclamation was: "Mercy, what a fright!"

"Maude!" exclaimed the distressed Mrs. Remington, "where have you
been? Go at once to Janet, and have your dress changed; then come
back to me."