"Your most obedient servant,
"JOHN WIGGINS.
"MISS PLYMPTON, _Plympton Terrace_."

Of this letter Edith took in the meaning of the first three lines only.
Then it dropped from her trembling hands, and sinking into a chair, she
burst into a torrent of tears. Miss Plympton regarded her with a face
full of anxiety, and for some moments Edith wept without restraint; but
at length, when the first outburst of grief was past, she picked up the
letter once more and read it over and over.

Deep as Edith's grief evidently was, this bereavement was not, after
all, so sore a blow as it might have been under other circumstances.
For this father whom she had lost was virtually a stranger. Losing her
mother at the age of eight, she had lived ever since with Miss Plympton,
and during this time her father had never seen her, nor even written to
her. Once or twice she had written to him a pretty childish letter, but
he had never deigned any reply. If in that unknown nature there had been
any thing of a father's love, no possible hint had ever been given of
it. Of her strange isolation she was never forgetful, and she felt it
most keenly during the summer holidays, when all her companions had gone
to their homes. At such times she brooded much over her loneliness, and
out of this feeling there arose a hope, which she never ceased to
cherish, that the time would come when she might join her father, and
live with him wherever he might be, and set herself to the task of
winning his affections.

She had always understood that her father had been living in the East
since her mother's death. The only communication which she had with him
was indirect, and consisted of business letters which his English agent