You are eighteen this very month. His child, whom
he thinks you are, would be almost seventeen, if alive. She died when
a babe of two years old.
"Eighteen years ago, Mollie, I was a happy wife and mother. Down in
Devonshire, in the little village of Steeple Hill, my husband and I
lived, where we had both been born, where we had courted and married,
where we hoped to lay our bones at last. Alas and alas! he fills a
bloody grave in the land of strangers, and I am drawing my last breath
in far America. And all, Mollie--all owing to Carl Walraven."
She paused a moment. The girl held the cup of wine to her lips. A few
swallows revived her, and enabled her to go on.
"There were two brothers, James and Stephen Dane. James, the elder by
six years, was my husband and your father. We lived in the old Dane
homestead--we three--a happy and prosperous household. We needed but
your coming, my daughter, to fill our cup of joy to the very brim. No
woman in all broad England was a happier wife and mother than Miriam
Dane when you were laid upon my breast.
"We named our baby-girl Miriam--your father would have it so--and you
grew healthful and beautiful, fair and blue-eyed, as it is in the nature
of the Danes to be.
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