you was her darter if I*d met you in Kamskatha. She hadn’t your fine feathers, but no one could mistake about your being birds of the old nest.”
“Yes, that’s it,” cried Gillian. “That’s the way I feel here, like a poor, little bird that’s been flying and flying among the myrtles with¬ out settling down anywhere; but onoe under the old hickory tree that is rattling its nuts down to the frosty grass this minute, the tired birdie longs to folds its wings and feel at home. It’s like living a dream over again to find myself here.”
“And this is the way she used to talk,” said Hart, gazing with looks of wistful fondness into the beautiful face uplifted to his.
“Who? my mother? Did she feel like a bird glad to rest?”
“No, like a bird forever wanting to try the wing. From the time she was ten years old she was always talking of the foreign parts she in¬ tended to visit; the people she meant to know; and the books she should some day write.”
“The books she would write? Why, uncle Daniel, did my mother write books?”
“Yes, yes, in her fancy, just as she traveled over strange countries.”
“But she was very young. Not much over my age when she died.”
“When she died?”
“Yes, when she died. Two or three years older perhaps, but not more than that.”
“Then you remember the time?”
“Yes, but not the circumstanoe. We were in Naples, I remember their coming to the convent where I had been left for tome reason, and tell¬ ing me I no longer had a mother, that she was gone.”
“And was this all?”
“No. One day when I asked for the place where my mother was laid, the old nurse took me up to a beautiful spot baok of Naples, where you could hardly see the graves for the roses that blossomed over them—not for a week or a month, but all the year round—and told me that was the place where I must seek for her.”
“And did you find the spot?”
“I don’t know; neither the nurse nor I could read, we could only guess where she lay by the brightness of the roses; but we found a little hollow on the hill-side, completely choked up with blossoms. The loveliest spot you ever set eyes on, so shaded that the softest moss crept over the little marble slabs all around, except one, and that was pure and white as snow. We picked that out for the one and come away.”
“And this is all you know of your mother?”
“What more should I know, poor, little child that I was? Papa never speaks of her; no other human being that I ever saw knew anything about her, that was why there was no Bleep for me to-night, till I had come down and had a talk with you.”
“It was the way she used to come when any¬ thing troubled her,” said Hart, looking thought¬ fully into the fire.
“And that proves how much we are alike. I wasn’t so certain about the nice old lady, or even cousin Hannah; but the moment I felt your hand on my head I was sure of you.”
The old farmer shook in his chair; he was almost crying.
“That’s right, gal—that’s right. It’s the way Sarah Hart’s darter should feel on coming home. It’s the way she would have felt herself if she— but what has become her? God help us all— what has become of her?”
Gillian turned suddenly pale, while her eyes grew wild and large.
“Oh, uncle, what a strange question!”
“Everything about her is strange,” muttered Hart, shaking his head doubtfully. “I don’t know how to talk or what to say; secrets always trouble me, especially when I don’t understand them. In all these years never to have heard a word: and now to be, as it was, knocked down with a single fact, and left to brood over it. Young lady, what kind of a man is your father?”
“My father—my father! Why, uncle Hart, who ever thought of asking that question before? What child ever did ask it? Why he is a grand, true man, gentle as an angel, and proud as—as an emperor. With wise men he is always the wisest; with good men he seems best of alL I never saw a human being that dared to take a liberty with papa, and yet he is mild and kind as a little child.”
“But you haven’t dared to ask him right straightforward about your own mother and her folks.”
“That’s true, and yet I could not tell the reason to save my life.”
“It’s because there’s something kept back.”
“No, I hope not—I hope not,” murmured Gillian, thoughtfully.
“You wasn’t afraid to ask me about her?”
“Not in the least. I only hesitated a little about the time of night, that is all.”
“Now tell me what you want to know.”
“Everything.”
“Very well: why not? There ain’t nothing to tell that a body need be ashamed on; and you’ll never see the day, gal, bright and peart as you be, that Sarah Hart mightn’t have gone ahead of her own child.”
