was brother Warren's greatest joy!" I said I thought it had been. Then she added, "If Carrie Votaw knew this she would want to go right out there and get that baby right away. She'd just love her!" I knew Carrie Votaw's fondness for children exceeded even Daisy's. The Votaw's had no children of their own. I told Daisy in tears that that was exactly what I had been wanting to do ever since Elizabeth Ann was born, and especially was it unbearable for me not to have her, since I no longer had him.
I shall not attempt to give the details of our conversation, for it was inclusive of every phase of my situation and would be a mere repetition of my story thus far told. I showed her letters I had, and pictures of Elizabeth Ann, and she, too, saw the likeness which her brother's child bore to him.
Miss Harding was understanding and kind, never once criticising her brother, even though she made a brave attempt to convince me that Mr. Harding's legal wife was fond of him. Though it seemed futile to me to expend so much time discussing this point upon which no one in the world was probably as intimately informed as I, I took occasion to remark that I had fully appreciated her rights, imposed by the long-standing union between her and Mr. Harding, and that this recognition on my part and my respect above everything else for my sweetheart's peace of mind, had resulted in the tragic situation I was today attempting to face.
It was pitifully plain to me that Miss Harding's immediate concern was for the Harding name, to preserve it conventionally intact, although the very method she chose to employ in her endeavor to impress me with my own duty toward my child and her brother's, only made her alarm the more apparent. It would be unfair to Elizabeth Ann, she said, to tell her who she was until she became twenty-five years of age—and perhaps had had a love-affair of her own. Miss Harding asserted that there was every probability that Elizabeth Ann might turn against me, her own mother, if she were told before that time. But this I would not admit for one second. I said that it might be a shock to Elizabeth Ann, but that I knew my child well enough to know
