She had felt so thankful for her own happy
home life at the time; and she remembered, too, the sweet hope that
lay like a closed-up bud in the bottom of her heart that day, as the
quartette moved away and left her standing alone with Arthur Stuart.
It was only a few weeks later that the end came to all her dreams,
through that terrible anonymous letter.
It was the Baroness who had sent it, she knew--the Baroness whose
early hatred for her mother had descended to the child. "And now I
must sit in the same house with her again," she said, "and perhaps
meet her face to face; and she may tell the story here of my mother's
shame, even as I have felt and feared it must yet be told. How
strange that a 'love child' should inspire so much hatred!"
Joy had carefully refrained from reading New York papers ever since
she left the city; and she had no correspondents. It was her wish
and desire to utterly sink and forget the past life there. Therefore
she knew nothing of Arthur Stuart's marriage to the daughter of
Preston Cheney. She thought of the rector as dead to her. She
believed he had given her up because of the stain upon her birth,
and, bitter as the pain had been, she never blamed him. She had
fought with her love for him and believed that it was buried in the
grave of all other happy memories.
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