All the love that she would have lavished on her husband, all the love that she would have given to her own child, all the repressed affection and buried tenderness of heart were given to this little one.

It was touching pitiful, sad, to see how she worshiped her.
"What shall I do when the three years are over, and her father comes to claim her ?" she would say to the doctor.

"I shall never be able to part with her.

Sometimes I think I shall run away with her and hide her." How little she dreamed that there was a prophecy in the words! "Her father has the first claim," said Dr.Letsom.

"It may be hard for us to lose her, but she belongs to him." "He will never love her as I do," observed Margaret Dornham.
Of the real rank and position of that father she had not the faintest suspicion.